Battle Royale: Sponsored by Centrum Silver

I was recently given a suggestion on how to write my blog. I was told to "write my blog more like this." Well ok. I'll give it a try.

BASKETBALL TEAMS YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO BE A PART OF
1. Northeastern Men's Basketball Team.
And here's a picture of them:
Wow. I read that back and its a bit harsh. My bad. But what's done is done, it's not like I can go back and change what I just wrote. I apologize, you know who you are. You were just really upset that you had to wait an extra 24 hours to read this masterpiece and I am frustrated with my forthcoming lack of material due to the *sniff sniff* end of the Syracuse basketball season. But that's not what we're here to talk about. I'd much rather not write anything about it and pretend that it never happened. Instead, let's talk about the best holiday since Thanksgiving.

Easter? No. Passover? Not quite. I'm talking about National Orange Day. Last Wednesday was the glorious day of the year when the best color ever invented finally gets its due. At least, that's the theory. In reality, the execution wasn't quite there. I started the day strong with an orange collared shirt that I wore to work. That was just a warm up. I followed it up with the main attraction: plain orange sweatshirt, orange t-shirt, and yes, I wore my pumpkin pants. I walked out of my dorm with pride, only to be slapped in the face by an endless tide of blues, reds, chartreuses, burnt siennas, and whatever other frigging colors those darn college students are wearing these days. I walked into my first class. 35 kids. 3 wearing orange (including me). The teacher walks in wearing all black. Terrific. A funeral atmosphere for the death of my favorite color. Second class: 75 kids. I was literally the ONLY one wearing orange. What college do we go to? Syracuse. Syracuse what? Saltine Warriors? Dragon Slayers? Swashbuckling Armadillos? No. The Syracuse Orange. Is it too much to ask to wear that color one day out of the year? Because if it is you could become a Cornell Big Red or a Delaware Blue Hen for all I care.

On a lighter note, I did get to attend the NCAA Regionals in Syracuse last weekend. I have to tell you, they weren't so much fun when I was sitting in a mob of Cornell fans during the West Virginia-Washington game. But, halftime of Kentucky-Cornell was very entertaining. A 75 year old Washington fan (who had lost already) was complaining to an usher about those darn kids who were standing in front of him during the game. God forbid that Ivy League fans get excited when their team does well for once. So one of the aforementioned ne'er do well youths went to plead his case, which the old-timer did not take to so kindly. And I quote:

Old Guy- Nobody's talking to you! I'll punch you right in the face!

Now, someone threatening a kid whose age is 25% of his is a pretty good halftime show. But it got better. A well-meaning West Virginia fan (age ~50) decided to get in on the shenanigans. He yelled "Get a life pal!" about 15 times before the other guy realized. And he had a killer response:

Old guy- I'll punch you right in the face! [and later] I hope you lose too!

Zing.

And here I was thinking that going to a basketball game by myself was not going to be as fun. Although I have to admit, you can't scream at the top of your lungs at the people next to you if they are a 5 year old on one side and a 70 year old lady on the other. And they don't respond to chest bumps as well as college kids do. Or earthquake-inducing high fives. Kind of makes me appreciate the people who would go to games with me. So if you are out there and at one point put up with me yelling "KJ!" every time Kris Joseph touched the ball, thank you.

I think that's enough for one day. But I feel the need to put a list in here as I so love to do. In honor of the upcoming Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. I will come up with 5 movies that I'd rather see.

1. Terminator 5, starring Jimmy Stewart as the Terminator and Danny DeVito as John Connor's great uncle, where Danny DeVito's character is continuously attacked by the new model of the Terminator, a happy-go-lucky song and dance kind of robot
   
2. Nicholas Sparks' newest novel-movie, One Last Kiss, starring Hayden Christensen and Megan Fox as two young, beautiful people suck at acting, fall in love, fall out of love, and fall back in love, only to realize that nobody around them actually cares
   
3. Rocky X, where X = whatever number Rocky movie they're on now, starring Sylvester Stallone as a boxer who loses, trains really hard, wins, and yells Yo Adrian!
4. Whatever Twilight, Moonlight, Skylight I don't even know what's going on in that series. But whatever it is, it would be better than Sylvester and Ah-nold.
5. Tropic Thunder. 'Nuff said.
   

Stop...Hammer Time

It's official. The legendary, landmark, amazing, perfect health care legislation that we have all heard so much about has been passed. Or, depending on how you look at it, the totalitarian, horrible, awful, worst thing that could ever happen to the United States health care legislation that we have all heard so little about has been passed. Seriously, who actually knows what's in it? It's longer than all of my textbooks, and you don't see me reading them for fun now do you. I stumbled upon this website that has a somewhat negative view of the bill (law now I guess), but its in a nice concise list form, which you all know that I absolutely love. Here's the link. I know it's out of date and doesn't really say much. I just thought it was funny that it keeps talking about ACORN (too soon?).

So here's what I think. Not very much. I honestly do not have the time to waste reading ponderous government documents that are inordinately long and verbose. I barely even have time to write a slightly below average blog each (almost) week. But, here's an argument against socializing health care. Who knows if it's even relevant, it's possible that it has nothing to do with anything. The problem with a Communist system is that there are no incentives for personal excellence. I know this is the point behind it, that everyone is equal, but seriously why should you be equal with a janitor if you went to school for 20+ years to be some kind of fancypants lawyer or something? Kind of what's happening here. Doctors are going to lose respect and reputability if everything has to go through the government. Salaries will go down. The idea of going through school for so many years that you could have a kid and put him through college in the time it takes to become a full fledged doctor will become less and less appealing. Next thing you know, the only doctors in the country will be John T. Ihavenothingbettertodowithmylife and Billy Q. Iamafraidtoleavecollege. I don't know about you, but writing those names down on emergency contact lists would be a bit too difficult for me. I once again make the disclaimer that that passage may in fact be completely useless and unrelated to everything ever.

See, I promised non-sports news this week. Now on to March Madness. You knew it was coming. First round was crazy. There were ups, downs, upsets, Syracuse not getting upset, and complete and utter heartbreak on the part of someone in my pool. I hope this person (henceforth known as bracket guy) does not mind my using their misery in this post. And if they do, I hope a big hug will suffice as repayment. So here's what happened (all times are estimates and may indeed be in the wrong order).
Thursday:
4:10 PM- Vanderbilt (4) scraps and fights its way back into a game that Murray State (13) had controlled the entire time. Vandy takes a 1 point lead with about 4 seconds to play. Murray makes a covered fadeaway from 18 feet away. Murray wins, bracket guy picked Vandy.
9:20 PM- Marquette, having opened up the second half on a 17-3 run, squanders a 15 point lead and drops into a tie with 2 minutes left. Nobody scores until Washington makes a shot with 1 second left. Game Washington. Bracket guy picked Marquette.
9:25 PM- UNLV sticks with Northern Iowa, winning for a lot of the time and nailing a 3 with 40 seconds left to tie the game. Northern Iowa responds with a 30 footer with 7 seconds to go, no sweat. Victory to Northern Iowa. Bracket guy had UNLV.
Friday
12:20 AM- Trailing most of the second half, Texas makes a miraculous comeback and forces overtime against Wake Forest. They go up 8-0 at the start of OT and Wake seems like they're waiting for their players to age a few more years before they score a basket. Wake comes back, assisted by 2-6 free throw shooting by Texas. Wake makes a fadeaway from the same spot Murray did earlier in the round. Wake takes it. Bracket guy went with Texas.

So the moral of the story: don't complain about how screwed your bracket is until you've lost 4 games on last second shots not just in the same round, but in the same day. Meanwhile, I hit 13 of 16 on the first day and took a mental snapshot of my 99.5 percentile bracket on espn.com. The next day I proceeded to go 10-16 and was ousted from first place in my pool.

Round 2. Storyline: Syracuse vs. Gonzaga. Syracuse still has not gotten Arinze Onuaku back from injury, and analysts say the Zags are "playing their best basketball of the season." Cuse could go the same way as Kansas and Nova did the day before. It didn't help that Rick Jackson, our only remaining big man, got 3 fouls pretty much before the opening tip. Oh wait, we have Da-shawn-tay Riley, almost didn't see him there because he's 7 feet tall and weighs about 45 pounds. And doesn't do very much. But he did have 0 rebounds in the game to go along with his 0 points, so thats a strong showing. In all fairness, the 1 assist he had was pretty sick. But that's beside the point.

Wes Johnson finally is back to being the best player ever (besides KJ of course). He could not miss a shot. He shot the way teams normally shoot against Cuse. And Andy. Too much to say about that guy. He does it all, and when he's hot, he's hot. Between the two of them, they scored 55 points. Compare it to Gonzaga's entire team. They got 65. Throw in Scoop's 13 points and we have 3 guys who outscored the other team by themselves. 87-65 final score, after the first 15 minutes it was never even a game. No lie, this is the second best I have ever seen Cuse play, the first being the time we beat Nova 95-77. Then again, I may be biased because I waited for 14 hours at the Dome for that one to start and my memory might be a little hazy, what with all of the sleep deprivation and hallucinations and whatnot.

I will leave you with this happy thought. After the bloodbath that was the first weekend of March Madness, I am left with only 4 of my Final Four teams alive. Ha! That's all of them! Count 'em- Ohio State, Kentucky, Baylor, Kansas State (just kidding...SYRACUSE!). We are looking primed for a national championship run. So, in conclusion, stay dry, stay awesome, and for goodness sake watch out for bad raspberries when you're picking out a batch to chow down on.

MJ 2-4 Just Sounds Like an Awful Nickname

I wonder if anyone (besides this one BA I know) would've noticed that this Friday at 9:30 PM in the Queen City of Buffalo, NY is the stage for a special edition version of Family Feud. That is, Family Feud with an actual audience of 20,000 people, basketballs, and the feud is within one family. Namely, the Joseph family. With my borderline creepy fascination with Kris Joseph, KJ 3-2, TGBPWHEOWEL, whatever you want to call him, I did not even notice that he had a brother playing D1 basketball for the Vermont Catamounts. Side bar, catamount is another name for puma. So my boy Kris is playing against his older brother Maurice, a guard for Vermont. Now, I can see where this is going. Kris takes Maurice (#24 for when you're watching the game) to school a few times and then the announcers will not stop talking about the fact that they're brothers. Who knows, maybe they won't go into double digits with the times they mention that Leo Rautins is Andy's father. Or maybe not. So special thanks to the BA who informed me of this fraternal matchup.

So on to the bigger picture of March Madness. I see some intriguing matchups (but will not give away my picks until the brackets lock on Thursday). In the South Region, I think 15 seed Robert Morris looks primed to make a run. Not only is the road to the Final Four paved for them with the blood of Scottie Reynolds and Villanova, history is on their side. Robert Morris is a founding father. What other important revolutionary figures have colleges named after them in past tournaments?

• George Washington University, named after first President of the United States George Washington (obviously)
• George Mason University, named after Bill of Rights architect George Mason
• Davidson College, named after Revolutionary War Brigadier General William Lee Davidson
• Georgetown University, named after a town named after the grandfather of King George III, mentioned several times in the Declaration of Independence as someone who pretty much sucked

Now let's look at some results from the past few March Madness tournaments to see how these revolutionary schools did.

• 2006- George Washington wins in the first round, Georgetown makes the Sweet 16 as a 7 seed, and George Mason makes the Final Four as an 11 seed
• 2007 (off year)- Davidson and GW lose in the first round, Georgetown makes the Final Four as a 2 seed
• 2008- George Mason loses in the first round, Georgetown loses in the second round (to Davidson), Davidson makes it to the Elite 8 as a 10 seed
• 2009 (off year)- Robert Morris loses in the first round

As you can clearly see, the performance of revolutionary schools depends on whether or not it is an even-numbered year. The moral of the story: bet everything you have on Georgetown facing Robert Morris in the Final Four.

So that takes care of the South and Midwest regions. West, easy. There's this one team there that's pretty good. And orange. Both are factors in them doing very, very well. That leaves one Final Four spot up for grabs in the East region. We'll take a look at the most intriguing match up. Team Let Down vs. Team Disgrace. Texas vs. Wake Forest. One team who started 17-0 and then lost pretty much everything. Another team who lost in the first round as a 4 seed last year, as well as losing to William and Mary, as well as 12th place in the ACC Miami (twice!). This is the selection committee's middle finger to these two teams. This is like March Madness's version of a drunk bum fight...possibly entertaining, probably means nothing. This is just a battle to see which one of them gets mauled in the second round by Kentucky.

While this was a short post, I'll try to keep updating it through the week. Sorry if you don't like sports, but it's all March Madness all the time until April. And maybe some other things so I don't lose 95% of my readers who hate it when I talk about sports.

Easy come, easy go (little high, little low)

That was quite a run we had there at #1. Gotta say, I'm very impressed with the timing, because the only game we won with that rank in the last 20+ years just happened to be on my birthday. I guess it turned out to be an even better present than I suspected. I'm getting Saturday's loss out of the way in one sentence though...just like ripping off a bandaid right? Louisvilleplayedperfectbasketballwithaveryemotionalfanbaseinthelastgameeverattheirhomearenaandtheresnowayanyoneinthecountrycould'vebeatenthemthewaytheywereplaying.
OW. That was a bit painful. Probably less painful than it is to read.

Well I don't really know where to go from here. I usually have at least 4 or 5 paragraphs to rave and rant about Kris Joseph and how awesome Syracuse is at pretty much everything...but we even lost at lacrosse this week! Well, there's something I've always wanted to try. You know those songs that college kids love? Yeah, the ones that pretty much all sound the same and have to do with irresponsible behavior unbecoming of a role model. I am going to translate the refrains of a few of those songs just for kicks. See if you can figure out what's what. And bear with me if it sucks.

First things first, let's try a really easy one.

Would any bystander care to dial the authorities?
A lady is spontaneously combusting...
I'm going to douse her with some water
Otherwise I fear that the structural integrity of this establishment is going to fail

Got it? Ok let's see what else I can find.

The type of rhythms and steps she is employing is overwhelming to me
I stop the task at which I am currently occupied to approach her
I search my mind for some prose to accurately compose a verbal portrait of her
Without calling her a prostitute (but I will anyway)

One more hippity hop song.

Don't give in to your natural impulses
Get just enough for yourself from that thing over there
A couple of big plants that are related
Wish that they had some ghosts living in them

Well, that was disappointing. I have to say I was expecting more from that section, weren't you? By this time, I'm really just stalling and trying to put a decent length post out there. Ok, idea. I apologize for taking the easy way out this week, but it's really not been one for me to write home about. So I will give you this valuable chance to take a look into my writing past and see the piece of writing that was a forerunner to this very blog. It was written in the summer of 2006, I believe, so some of the humor may be, shall we say, dated. But, I must pay homage to my roots...high school me. So enjoy.
__________________________________________________________

If you have been at home during the day at anytime, without anything better to do except maybe find a large building to jump off of, you have probably watched a game show. Right now, I’m going to concentrate on the fiercest offender of my right to no cruel and unusual punishments: the Price is Right. Bob Barker is old, gray, and somehow attractive to every single woman that comes to play. Without fail, he will receive at least 5 kisses on every show. I have no idea how he does this. He’s like 90, but is the second biggest womanizer I have ever seen (the first, of course, being Donald Trump). At the end of every show, he tells his audience to help control the pet population by having your pets spayed or neutered. I think Bob should consider that for himself, to help control the human population. Another sure thing on this program is that a 70-year-old woman will win either a pair of guitars or a pickup truck. This is a very scary thought. How many people on this show win 2 ton hunks of dangerous metal who don’t actually have valid driver’s licenses I hope to never find out. I wonder also how many people win trips to places they already live.

Bob Barker-“Mr. Kineke, you’ve just won a 6 night stay in the Clifton Park Best Western!”
Me-“Umm Bob? I live just down the street from there.”
Bob Barker-“Oh. Well, I suppose I can substitute this fake plastic vomit instead, as it holds about the same value.”

Other game shows not only have incompetent hosts, but contestants as well. Family Feud has 10 contestants from 2 families facing off. 8 of these people were probably eating paint chips as children. This was an actual answer given by a player.

Host-“Ok. We’re looking for the top 5 answers here. What is a city with a song named after it?”
Contestant-“Texas

And to make sure they don’t stick a shotgun in their mouth when they hear the “Stupid Answer” buzzer, everyone says “Good answer!” over and over again. I cannot stand those horrible common last name families. The Browns. The Smiths. The Johnsons. Sometimes, they go crazy and pick an exotic sounding one. The O’Briens. The Changs.

Another game show with astonishingly stupid contestants is Who Wants to be a Millionaire? A woman had to ask the audience what month the Super Bowl was in (before the dumb NFL people bumped it to February). People consistently walk away with $1,000 and sometimes even $0. This shocks me. In the good old days with Regis Philbin when at least one or two every month would win $1,000,000. I miss hearing Regis say, “Is that your final answer?” after a question like:

Which one of these is a number?
A) 6.5
B) Please send me home now
C) Tomato juice
D) Regis’s tie is distracting.

Right now, I believe I hear you saying: “But Tim, you do well on a game show in front of a national audience.” I say: “Possibly you are correct.” But, you don’t hear me saying that Texas is a city. Because it’s not.
__________________________________________________________

That's just a small sample of the piece I'm referring to. I'll save the rest for days when I have nothing to write about. Like today. Hope you enjoyed today's post, I sure did...except for the part where I let every single one of my readers down. But just like Syracuse basketball, you win some, you lose some.

omg we r #1!

This post is going to cover a lot. Of basketball. And a little birthday. And some snow. And basketball. I will warn the faint of heart that there is a lot of sportstalk in this one, but then again, SYRACUSE BASKETBALL IS NUMBER ONE IN THE COUNTRY. That felt really good to type. So here's where it starts. Saturday. Because as far as I'm concerned, it was such a wonderful day that everything before it kind of got wiped clean.

Just kidding. It actually started late Friday night. I somehow got it in my head that staying up as late as humanly possible was the best way to prep for a day in which I would be standing for about 12 hours. Smart, right? So I went to a friend's room in a dorm near the Dome and we hung out for a while. And as a harbinger of Syracuse's athletic excellence, what would be on ESPNU at 2 in the morning but a rerun of Cuse's comeback win in last year's national championship game that was nothing short of miraculous. Go here for the synopsis. It's awesome, don't worry. Unless you go to Cornell.

So after some excitement and whatnot, we bedded down for the night around 4. 2 hours is enough to sleep right? Well, I ended up getting about 20 minutes worth. But that's all I need. Wake up at 6:20 AM, get ready, go to the Dome around 7. We get a good spot in line, so there we stand. At 7:45, the security people came through the line and kindly (not really) informed us that backpacks would not be allowed inside. He gave us some options.

• Put them in someone's room
• Hide them
• Throw them on the roof of the Dome and climb up for them after the game

One of those was not an option. Leaving hiding them in a bush literally what the guy told us to do. Oh and I should mention that this problem was left to be dealt with until 15 minutes before we were let into the Dome for the pregame festivities. Well, we of the National Honors fraternity do not take problem solving lightly. We were quick thinkers and took the 4 backpacks of the group to the gym to put them in a locker. 2 of us left and 4 stayed to fight the bloodthirsty hordes who would try to steal our spots. Funny story, gym wasn't open for another hour and a half. So I take the four backpacks and sprint across campus to my dorm and sprint back. I got back with 5 minutes to spare and was so overheated that I couldn't bear to be wearing more than a t-shirt in the 30 degree weather (and pants of course).

8:00 comes and goes. We are not let in. My heroic Sprint for Justice and ESPN College Gameday is wasted. Turns out that the security at the Dome hated kids (at least for Saturday) and we don't get in until 9:30. Once we're in, we get our seats and I find my MIA brother and we rejoin the group. Gameday was a lot of fun, but there were two things wrong with it. First was the lack of creativity on them telling us what to do.

"Guys, we're taping a 30 second promo to air during SportsCenter. We're gonna need you to go crazy!"
"Guys, we're going live on SportsCenter. We're gonna need you to go crazy!"
"Guys, Gameday is on now. We're gonna need you to go crazy!"
"Guys, Jay Bilas remembered to get dressed this morning. We're gonna need you to go crazy!"

Second, there was a bit of visual miscommunication between my brother and me and the majority of the structure in which we were temporarily housed. To put it bluntly, this was our view:
That orange hat belongs to the jerk with the gigantic Brandon Triche head. Not a great view to say the least.

After Gameday the Carrier Dome thought it would be cool to, you know, not let us stay in after they already let us in. So we got kicked out. Into the snow. And rain. For another 6 hours. Not cool. The thing that got us through the day was the fact that there was no shortage of people willing to bring us food. I don't put names in here, remember, so bear with me. I'd like to thank the first couple people who brought us Varsity pizza, the second couple people (including my big) who stole enough food from the dining hall to feed an army, and my roommate who brought us some Domino's pizza. On behalf of my entire group, I'd like to thank you all very very very much. Other than the food, some other highlights of the looooong wait to get in included (another list of stuff!):

• My ongoing feud with the friggin' event staff guy with the friggin' mustache
• An ongoing and heated debate of whether or not Crocs footwear is edible
• My trip to a sink to boil my hands to regain feeling in them
• People getting tossed out of line for cutting
• Thoughtful and desperate prayer that we didn't lose to Nova and negate all of our hard work in turning into human ice sculptures

Now comes the fun part. We got in around 6ish if memory serves. Only 3 hours to tip-off! We got our seats and sat down for the first time since noon. Several of us took naps and then me and my main man started scheming to try to sneak people into the student section. It turned out not to happen once we figured out that 4 people couldn't fit into about half of a normal person-sized seat.

Tip-off finally at 9. We promptly take control and decide to not miss any shots ever. We cruise to a 46-36 halftime lead, score 75 points for free tacos on an Arinze Onuaku freethrow of all things. The outcome was never in doubt. Of our players who played, here were our point totals: Rick Jackson 19, Arinze Onuaku 17, Kris Joseph 16, Scoop Jardine 16, Wes Johnson 14, Andy Rautins 12. Oh, and Brandon Triche 1. Apparently our freshman point guard was who Nova thought was the lynchpin of our offense. Well, they stopped him pretty well. But putting 5 defenders on one guy leaves a few other people open.

What did Kris Joseph do, you ask? Well, he scored 16, we covered that already. He slashed, he dashed, he made amazing plays all over the place. And. He made a 3. Most I've ever yelled in my life when that happened. Also, Kris did a little of this too:
That was the back page of the DO (basically) which ended up on the greatest birthday card ever a few days later. But we're getting to that.

Birthday time. It all started the day before my birthday...I guess that's a trend this week, things starting a day before they actually start. Well, I was minding my own business making this sign for the basketball game on Tuesday:
My roommate tells me to come out into the common room for a second. And apparently I'm so unobservant that about 15 people can sneak into my room without me looking up or hearing anything. Touche. It was at this shindig that I received said birthday card from one of my best friends. It was an auspicious start to the day.

Lunchtime on my birthday is when things started heating up. Like my friend's oven. To make chicken nuggets. Oh yeah. Chicken nuggets. Eating chicken nuggets + watching How I Met Your Mother = awesome. Multiply that by 2 for the amount of awesome people I was hanging out with and you get 2awesome. After a couple uneventful classes, I went to go over to the Dome to wait to get great seats for the game with my brother and my main man. We get in, and we get the idea (from my main man, you know who you are) that we should wait by the tunnel and get some autographs when the players walk out for warmups. Well, in short, it paid off. I now am the proud owner of a hat signed by Andy Rautins, Wes Johnson, and Arinze Onuaku. Even better, my #32 shirt got signed by KJ 3-2 himself! And even better better, I have my brother to thank for both his camera wielding skills and candor. On my camera's absolute last gasp of batteries he said "Hey Kris it's my brother's birthday, can you take a picture with him?" And this is the result, if you hadn't seen it on Facebook already:
Best. Birthday. Ever. Best. Week. Ever.

Blog delayed a day, sorry, I want to do it justice