Blame it on the zebras

Another week, another soulcrushing Denver Broncos loss. I am at a loss. Always searching for someone to blame for my team's failings, this time I turn to the referees. The play that led directly to Philly's game winning field goal was a sideline "catch." I believe that the ball was bobbled when the player fell out of bounds=no catch. The refs called it incomplete, reviewed it, and reversed the call. Not cool. Oh well, at least my amazing (and forgiving) neighbors were there to host us with delicious taco dip and all sorts of other goodies. Thanks for not kicking me out when I spilled punch all over the floor.

Heartbreak aside, I am pleased to say that Syracuse is asserting itself as one of the best teams in college basketball. A guy on the other team is shooting 3's from out of state and drops 38 on us. Every loose ball was apparently repeled by the color orange (makes sense, the ball is orange-ish too). Syracuse was hypnotized into thinking that their teammates were at least 5 feet away from where they actually were and ended up throwing the majority of their passes to Seton Hall. Andy Rautins could've possibly been playing drunk or at the very least on 72 hours of no sleep. But we won. And I'll tell you why. Wes Johnson is the greatest basketball player in the country. Case closed. He literally willed Syracuse to victory. The rest of the team played their worst games of the year. Johnson crashed the boards and cleaned up missed layup after missed layup. He grabbed every rebound, blocked shots after the defense fell apart. Basketball's a team sport, but this is one of the greatest individual efforts I've seen in watching college basketball. PS- my man Kris Joseph scored 16 and had some sicknasty dunks. Check them out on Sportscenter top plays.

I just got back from my church's Kwanzaa celebration. Gotta say it was pretty cool. Lot's of good music and dancing. So I think I should go ahead and talk a bit about it because not too many people know what it's about. It's got multiple days like Hannukah (7 days for 7 principles). There's gift giving like Christmas. And it was invented out of the blue like Festivus (in 1966 by Ron Kerenga). So it has the pieces of all of the winter holidays and is a whole boatload of fun. Plus, you get to learn some Swahili along the way. And if the Lion King is a good indicator, Swahili is and awesome language. These are the 7 principles the celebration is based on:

• Umoja (unity)
• Kujichagulia (self-determination)
• Ujima (collective work and responsibility)
• Ujamaa (cooperative economics)
• Nia (purpose)
• Kuumba (creativity)
• Imani (faith)

Just say those words. I know. Good stuff, much more fun than English.

It's getting late and I'm going to see Wicked tomorrow (so excited!). So I'll leave with one simple request. Cross your fingers for the Broncos. They need a couple big breaks to get into the playoffs and they can use all the help you can give them. Merry Late Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Excuses Excuses

I wasn't planning on even writing this tonight, but one thought about my tearful readers, heartbroken by the fact that they would have to survive one week without my profound prose and amazingly potent sentiments, brought the reality home to me. The blog must go on! So I am writing while sleep deprived and with dry scratchy eyes after the 2:45 marathon that was Avatar in 3-D IMAX style.

So I'll start with Avatar. It's awesome. Watch it. I've heard that people are saying that special effects are being used as surrogates for...well, you know. A plot. And in this movie that's 100% true. But it's also 100% worth it. It's like looking at a piece of artwork with all of its colors and whatnot. Except this painting has a huge helicopters vs. pterodactyls battle.

That said, it's necessary for me to recount the horror of this past Sunday. AKA the worst day of football ever. I went over to my awesome neighbors' house to watch the games. I was with my mom, a Packers fan, my neighbor, and my 'brother', both 49ers fans. And we watched all three games because they were all at the same time and my neighbors have like the ultimate uberfan superawesome package for football. So all went well, we departed for a party at a friend's house. Then it hit the fan. One after another, our teams fell like the valiant Spartan warriors at Thermopylae. The 49ers fell to a relentless Eagles attack, my Broncos lost on a last minute touchdown pass by the worst and largest of NFL quarterbacks, and the Packers lost on a literal last second touchdown that was pretty much the best thrown ball of the season by any player on any team. Oh and not to mention that the divisional rivals of the Broncos and 49ers both won. The only redeeming factor of the day was the Sunday Night Football meltdown of Brett Favre. And his coach hates him now.

*Deep breath.* Wow, I really needed to get that off my chest. Other than that, it's just great to be home. My present to you: more shopping time and less blog reading! Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, blah blah blah.

The Only Good Politician is a...Republican?

Good afternoon! It feels great to say that now that I'm not writing this in the middle of the night/Wednesday morning. I hope that the end of everyone's semester is going well. Since it probably actually matters that you guys study this week, I'll try to keep this brief and easy to read.

So I guess I'm trying to use finals as an excuse to not write very much, but the fact of the matter is, I really don't have too much to discuss this week. Tiger Woods is still the main news story basically everywhere, so I had to dig really deep to find this week's non-sports story. I chanced upon this one, which I found quite interesting. It's about the gradually lessening disdain that New Yorkers have for Gov. David Paterson. His favorability rating is up to 36%, the highest that it's been in a while. However, he'll apparently need to increase that by quite a bit more by election time next year to earn the Democratic nomination to run for reelection. I'm going to go back a bit- 1994, Republican George Pataki is elected governor of New York, one of the most Democratic states in the country. He is elected quite easily to second and third terms and declined to run anymore. This opened the door for Eliot Spitzer to win the next election, so 2006 gave us our first Democratic governor in 12 years. How does he reward the voters? About a year after his election he is busted for being caught in a prostitution ring. After being the most outspoken opponent to said rings. Not only that, but everyone started to hate his replacement, David Paterson, pretty darn quick too.

The whole roundabout point I'm trying to make here is: politics, what the hell? It was confusing enough to figure out how someone could win a presidential election with the other guy getting more votes. Now even party lines are becoming blurred. That was the one constant for politics in my (not very highly trained) view. Republicans stuck with Republicans, Democrats hobnobbed with Democrats. But looking back at New York, they absolutely loved their Republican governor and all of the new Democratic governors are becoming quickly the most hated men in the state. But, come presidential election time, nobody even bothers to campaign here because it's guaranteed to vote Democrat. I don't get it.

But, for something I do understand, Syracuse basketball continues to dominate on the court. We played Florida, undefeated and #11 in the country, on Thursday if you didn't know. Managed to beat them by 12 points too, despite Florida's uncanny ability to make impossible shots. I swear, this wouldn't have been out of place in the game:

Announcer: Boynton [Florida player] brings the ball up, stops about 50 feet from the basket. He pulls out a blindfold, ties it on. Throws the ball behind his back, it bounces off the scoreboard...and good! Three points! Thats the 34th behind the back shot that Florida's made in the last 5 minutes.

But no worries, Cuse pulled it out. And let's face it, they play up to their competition. When St. Francis (NY) came to town, we only won by like 24 points. Luckily for us fans, Kris Joseph came up with a monster slam dunk to get us to 75 points and free tacos. Looming opponents include St. Bonaventure and Oakland. St. Bonaventure: Why don't you man up and rename yourself after a saint with a cooler name. Oakland: Nobody even knows where you are. There is no Oakland in Michigan.

I hate to end on a serious note, but I came across a saying this week that I found highly inspirational and just awesome in general. "The only difference between our secrets is whether we allow them to evolve into tales of heroism or fear." Good luck on finals everyone!

At least I'm not as screwed up as Tiger Woods...

Back in business, guess you gotta read this blog again. I received some negative feedback for the first time in the history of this blog (and possibly my entire awesome life). Apparently it is not a good idea for me to get too emotional or nostalgic with my blog. Admittedly I probably could've done better than a timeline of my Thanksgiving, but I have prepared a brief defense. Number one, Thanksgiving was awesome and reliving it one more time was the least I could do for the honorable holiday after all it has done for mankind. And second, the turkey still hadn't quite worn off and I was feeling a bit lazy to tell you the truth. My bad for being human, it happens to the best of us.

Anyway, this week I'm back in full force and I'm a little bit angry to tell you the truth. I don't know if you've heard, but Tiger Woods has been in the news just a couple times over the past week or so. Show of hands for everyone who knew that...anyone? I guess I'm the only one who noticed, because I saw zero hands go up. Oh well, you'll probably catch it sooner or later. Here's my take on the situation. Tiger Woods leaves his house at 1 in the morning. He crashes into a fire hydrant backing down his driveway. Then he inexplicably continues to back up, eventually introducing his car to a tree. Now, if my physics class taught me anything, a car that backs up into a tree will have the rear part of the car obstructed by said tree. However, the early story was that Wood's wife just happened to be on hand, at 1 in the morning mind you, to smash the back window of the car and drag good ol' Tiger out onto the driveway. One problem...if the car backed up into several objects, the back of the car probably looked like the below picture, leaving no need to smash any window. Plus, I'm guessing the driver side door was probably unlocked, but that would be the smart option, and nothing in this situation could be confused with a smart idea.


I'm going to take a quick second to relay one of the greatest jokes I have heard in a long time. This was completely off the cuff and unintended by one of my group members, making it all the more awesome. "I really appreciate the irony of Tiger Woods' wife using a golf club to get him out of the car."

Ok, maybe it's just my kind of humor but I thought that was awesome. Anyway, there's more to this story than that. This is like a fricking soap opera. And I hate soap operas. The media will run a breaking news headline for anything coming out of this. And I mean anything. For instance, I'm watching ESPN and on the bottom line, in the middle of the college basketball scores, runs a headline that went something like this: Tiger Woods found at fault for car accident and receives a citation. COME ON! It's a one car accident. Middle of the night. Who the hell else are you going to give the citation to? The fire hydrant? The tree? It had better not be the tree, it is the only thing/person that acted sensibly in the situation. Seriously, it stopped Tiger from backing into his neighbor's houses, schools, children's hospitals, nunneries, and pretty much everything else that you can ram an Escalade into because the fire hydrant sure as hell didn't. But come on, I'd rather see NHL scores than learn about the mundane details of Tiger's driving history.

Lastly, there's this whole deal with Tiger's mother or mother-in-law or some random old lady who went to the hospital on Tuesday. The events aren't even related! Am I talking crazy here? This got bottom line coverage, had stories written about it everywhere, and had absolutely zero impact on anything ever besides Tiger's personal life. Sometimes I hate the media. No offense to my brother who is a part of said media.

Now that that's off my chest, I can turn to the sporting world, which wasn't very exciting but saw the Syracuse Orange beat Maine 101-55 (my favorite player, Kris Joseph, scored 14 points and had many an emphatic slam dunk). Oh and by the way, the score at halftime of this one was 60-12. Syracuse 60, Maine 12. I will now pause for effect. Done pausing. That kind of score should not be welcome in any sport. I want nothing less than to insult Syracuse, I just think we're taking it a bit far with scheduling easy opponents. Let's see some games where the other team gets within 30...could be fun, right?

Additionally, my Broncos won 44-13 over the Chiefs. I was watching the play-by-play on my computer and I have to admit, the digital representation of the Broncos' statistics looked good. Here's a breakdown of the first few possessions of the second half for the Chiefs: turnover on downs, interception, interception, punt, fumble recovery for a touchdown. Besides that punt, the only time the ball was in Broncos territory was when Denver was kicking off after scoring. Man that was a sweet game. I haven't seen that kind of domination since Jose Canseco fought Hong Man Choi. Just skip to like 1:00, 1:10 and you'll see what I mean.

I just love the opportunity to make fun of Jose Canseco like that. He's an idiot. Oh well, despite all appearences, no I don't count the Tiger Woods thing as a sports story, so this wasn't a hundred percent about sports. Seriously, Tiger has so much drama he's turning into a chick flick. A chick flick where the hero offers his wife $60 million in a revision of the prenup to stay married to him for two more years. Just sayin.

Paulus Out!

Ok, great excuse for being late yet again. I was ballin' with my main man and lost track of time a little bit. But it was worth it pissing off those punks at the gym who treat pickup basketball like it's the World Series of Poker or something. Not the best metaphor, but here's a better one. Their language makes Josh McDaniels, the Broncos' pottymouth coach, look like Shakespeare.

Now that I'm back at school, everyone's asking "How was your Thanksgiving?" So I'll take a moment now and say a few words about it in case you haven't heard about my T-Day. It. Was. Awesome. Any highly positive word will do, I guess- fantastic, prodigious, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, whatever whatever. It was the greatest Thanksgiving ever. Here's how it broke down.

10:30 AM: Wake up. Mom's already made the cinnamon rolls and the Thanksgiving Day Parade is on TV. Have some rolls, make some comments on how nice dinner smells, make fun of balloons with brother.
11:00 AM: Bring dad a cinnamon roll up on the roof where he's putting up Christmas lights. Hang out with dad on roof, help with lights, survey our kingdom, yell at passing neighbors.
12:00 PM: Go back inside, more cinnamon rolls, wait anxiously for football to start.
12:30 PM: Football starts. Yes.
1:00 PM: Dinner is served, football is momentarily forgotten. Table is sagging with weight of untold multitude of foods. Computer is set up next to table, Skype call is made (after several failed attempts) to brother in Buffalo. Great times are had by all.
2:00 PM: Watch football, nap, eat. Repeat for next 5 hours. Newcomers to the party include punch and Tollhouse Pie. Mmmmm.
7:00 PM: My "second oldest bro" arrives from Thanksgiving with his actual family, impromptu lefty ping pong tournament ensues.
7:30 PM: Go to neighbor's house for bonus dessert and Broncos game.
9:30 PM: Halftime. Back to my house for more turkey before the second half.
11:30 PM: Broncos game ends with victory. Back to my house for more ping pong.

So yeah, Thanksgiving was pretty sweet.

Segue- know what else is sweet? Syracuse athletics. Sure our football team lost 56-31, but one thing is different about the team now. Greg "No Look Pass" Paulus is officially done with being Syracuse's quarterback. Raise a glass to Paulus, the man who threw away our season the first game of the year, the man who threw 5 picks against South Florida. You will be missed.

Basketball update- we are absolutely destroying the terrible teams on our schedule. While it may not be exciting, the guys (minus Mookie Jones) seem to be having fun. And it's translating into a ton of free tacos for us Cuse fans (75 points = IT'S TACO TIME!) So we will wait until December 10 against Florida and then January 2 against Pitt until we actually face real teams. March seems so far away right now.

I think that's enough for now, finals coming up and all. I know you'd rather read this than study, but I think for your future's sake you should study for a bit. Peace out, I'm going to buy my Ryan Nassib jersey now!

Yeah, this one's gonna be a little shorter because I'm home now. And late too. Man, I guess my productivity drops off quite a bit when I'm home. So it looks like that homework that I got due the day I get back is going to suffer too. But that aside, I'd just like to let everyone know how great it is to be home.

So as you may have heard (from the last paragraph), I'm home for Thanksgiving. I am sitting in my living room with my feet propped up eating a black and white cookie from my hometown bakery. Be jealous. But all kidding aside, I should use this opportunity to reflect on the importance of going home every once in a while. Home is where you can go to decompress. It's away from all of the craziness of college-empty of bumbling drunk people and full of loving family. I don't think that there has been any better time in my life than the time spent here in the house that I've lived my entire life (no disrespect to any of you who I've had sicknasty times with at the 'Cuse).

I realize now that it's been a long time since I've made a list, so here's a list of things at home that maintain a bit of an edge over college.

• THE FOOD
• THE SHOWERS
• Let's face it: chores > essays
• THE FOOD...yeah it deserves two mentions, maybe two or three more at least
• Being able to drive places
• Frisbee games
• And...parents...because let's face it, we all need to get taken care of sometimes

So I'm going to spend every second that I'm here wisely. Only thing is, that also means maybe not catching up on sleep...but that's what Thanksgiving Day is for! Eat, sleep, watch football, repeat. Is there any better day?

From my actual home to my home away from home. Syracuse athletics! Probably the best weekend they've had since a guy named Ernie was playing football for us. First, basketball. We absolutely trash Cal and NC, ranked in the top 12 in the nation. I mean, it looked like 'Cuse wasn't even trying too hard, they just make winning look effortless. I cannot say enough about our team this year. We lost our three big personalities and turned into a team where on any given night one of five people can lead in scoring. Nothing against the guys that left, but it's like our team has turned from this into this. (Note that this section concerns the movie Space Jam. If you haven't seen it, stop reading immediately. And watch Space Jam.)

Don't get me wrong, the Monstars had great individual talent and were an offensive juggernaut. They had the physical gifts to be great. But, they were turnstiles on defense. They had absolutely no aggression when it came to defending the hoop. Additionally, they only practiced one time and that was for about 10 seconds. Seriously, they didn't even use a real ball. They used Michael Jordan. The Toon Squad, on the other hand, had fundamentals. They had a team dynamic unlike any other, with a large number of players contributing to the team's success. It didn't matter if they were knocking out the opposition by smelling bad or driving around the court on a moped distributing assists. They practiced together and ended up winning the game. By the way, the Monstars are 2007-08 Syracuse and the Toon Squad is this year's team. Just in case you hadn't realized.

Syracuse football has been wrecking chumps too. And by chumps I mean Rutgers. We got 9 sacks, and that's not counting the time that Doug Hogue tackled the quarterback before Rutgers even knew the ball had been snapped. Our defense dominated, our offense did enough to win, and our special teams...well, let's just say that only two of their kicks got blocked. Oh, and did I mention that we did all of this without:

• Mike Williams (quit): top 10 wide receiver in the country
• Arthur Jones (knee): top 15 pick in next year's NFL draft
• Derrell Smith (knee): potential All-Big East middle linebacker
• Pretty much our entire starting offensive line

And did I mention that in addition to not having all of those guys, we still have a healthy Greg "Two for Flinching" Paulus, which is an even greater detriment to the team. But we won 31-13 in which was the most fun Syracuse game I have ever attended.

And we won't mention the soulcrushing defeat (the fourth in a row) for my Broncos. But things are looking up! I've heard that if they lose on Thanksgiving, coach isn't going to let them eat any turkey or fixins. If I were in their shoes, I would crawl over broken glass in a pool of acid with electrodes attached to my head that would shock me everytime I talked about sports in order to win the game. That is what Thanksgiving dinner means to me. What does it mean to you, Denver? That's all for now, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Sports! Sports! Food! Sports!

It's Tuesday again. That can only mean one thing: one more blog to distract you from whatever test you were were preparing for, whatever homework you were doing, whatever cancer you were finding the cure for. While I don't advocate procrastination myself, feel free to read the greatest blog ever. I guarantee that at least 2 or 3 other people are doing the same thing. Oh, and those numbers are in millions by the way.

Due to a bet with a close friend, I recently tried (and failed miserably...twice) to spend a day without talking about sports. It made me realize how they've become integrated into my personality. I grew up with them...watching them, playing them, even inventing a few. If you're ever on the racquetball court, I can teach you G-ball and if you're on a playground maybe I'll challenge you to some freestyle swinging. Anyway, it's taught me some important things about myself. For one, I discovered that my personal hell is not being able to talk about sports and then being faced with an all day marathon of college basketball. Literally all day, the first game was at 12 AM, then at least one game every two hours until midnight tonight. I also learned that asking me not to talk about sports is basically asking me to change my personality. And it really really sucked. So I now have learned never to attempt even remotely to do the same thing to someone else. So I guess even though I failed (twice) I came out the other side a better person. Thanks to the person who challenged me, they know who they are.

Allllrighty then. That's out of the way. Now let's talk some sports! I'll make this nice and dramatic. I returned to my room from a study session Saturday afternoon. It was a day like any other, except that the Syracuse temperature was 5 or 6 times higher than it normally is this time of year. I turn on my computer to check on the Cuse football game. Lo and behold, despite losing their best player on both offense and defense, Syracuse had scrapped their way to a 9-3 lead with only 3 minutes to go. I turned on the TV to watch the end of the game. Alas, the computer was updating very slowly and the televised portion of the game showed me the ugly truth, akin to the Phantom of the Opera taking of his mask revealing his gruesome, disfigured face beneath. Louisville 10, Syracuse 9 with only a minute to go.

Syracuse gets the ball and instantly jumpstarts my hopes of a victory with a long kick return. Behold, hope! An 11 yard pass! More hope! Another comple...son of a B****!!!! What would transpire but a game ending interception. One look at the play and I knew in my heart who was to blame for the loss: not Greg Paulus. Wait...my keyboard must be broken. Let me type that again. Not Greg Paulus. Wow. I did not know that was possible. To blame for this loss: Mike Williams. Yes, the star receiver who quit the team a couple weeks ago. Here's the deal. On the interception, Paulus throws a good pass to Marcus Sales, wide receiver. Sales decides to let the ball go through his hands, and if that wasn't enough, he decides to reach down and tip it towards the oncoming defender. The defender catches the ball, game over. So. If Mike Williams were still on the team, there's no way Paulus looks anywhere else on the last drive of the game. Or, even if he did, Louisville would stack all 11 defenders on Williams and if someone else dropped a pass there would be nobody around to intercept it. Williams doesn't drop that pass, Syracuse goes on to have a chance to win. Mike, thanks a lot for this one. Chump.

Two closing thoughts on the game. First thought: A wise sage (aka my brother) pointed out to me something eerie. First game of the season: Greg Paulus ends Syracuse's promising beginning to a season with an interception. Last game: Syracuse's bowl hopes are completely eliminated with a Paulus interception. Second thought: The guy who intercepted the pass for Louisville was named Andrew Robinson. Yes, that's right. Same name as the guy we started at quarterback for the start of last year before benching him and eventually turning him into a tight end. Karma? Possibly.

Alright, that's the end of that. "That" being my hopes of Syracuse not sucking in football this year. In other interesting news, look at this video. Honestly, do I even have to comment on that? I think I should just let you enjoy the amazingness that is human stupidity. I mean seriously: Who does that?


I owe you some non-sports type stuff I guess. I mean, I was really on a roll with that but I suppose I can try. Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue" came out today. I really should try to stay away from the Sarah Palin jokes. I mean, they've pretty much been done to death by Tina Fey and everyone else who has seen Russia from their house...I shouldn't have done that. But ok one more joke.

Q: What's Sarah Palin's middle name?
A: I don't know, Alaska!

Now if you want to try it out at home, it works with pretty much any question about her. What's Sarah Palin's favorite ice cream? I don't know, Alaska! What's her husband's name? Why does she hate moose so much? What's her favorite magazine? Oh wait I know what's not her favorite magazine! (Hint: Her ex-son-in-law is posing in it). Too soon? Whatevs, I went for it.

I hope this blog is better than the Broncos' performance on Sunday. Seriously, who loses to the Redskins? (Shoutout to my brother who loves the Redskins). Cuse basketball is idle until Thursday so they couldn't cheer me up. Oh well, hope everyone has a great week and I'll write again next Tuesday. Which is right before my favorite holiday! Friday, November 27, National Flossing Day! Nah, just kidding. It's Thanksgiving. Peace out.