It's A Dunk-Off

This is the hardest I have laughed at a youtube video in at least three days (I laugh a lot at youtube videos, three days is actually pretty decent. And also, the last three days have been pretty much laughter-free, so this helps. Goddamn VCU.) It was to the point where I had to forward this video to my boss, because there's no other way I could pass off how hard I was just laughing in my office. There's no covering that up with a cough.

My question is: did people do this regularly? Beer pong slam dunks? I've been to my fair share of parties, played my fair share of beer pong (graduating from the #2 binge drinking school in the country, per capita....stupid Texas-San Antonio always beat us) and I've never attempted this myself, seen this attempted, or heard about it being attempted until this video. I feel like we missed out a little bit. I see it playing out like this: we set it up and somebody like Haley (who has little regard for bodily injury) or Smapes (who just wants everyone to accept her) dunks one, to great laughter and applause....then half an hour later Russell tries to one-up it and makes a huge mess and breaks somebody's leg or spills on some girl's dress that has been in the family for 300 years or something, and everyone yells "Goddammit, Russell!" Because that's just how Russell's luck works.

Also: that guy in the skateboard (at the beginning and again at 30 seconds) just GETS AFTER IT. Is there anything better than a slow motion flight leading into a fast motion crash? I say no.

Ugh.

UTEP.

Rhode Island.

Bucknell.

Bradley.

Northern Iowa.

And now VCU. Losing to mid-majors as a high seed is getting a little old. My only solace today is that I don't cheer for a team coached by John Calipari (sorry, Hendo.)

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Things I'm (trying to) look forward to now that KU's season is done:

1. Opening Day is right around the corner. The Red Sox, um, might be decent this year.

2. Tiger Woods comes out tomorrow for PS3.

3. I've got the the season 5 DVD's for How I Met Your Mother to run through. They're still new to me.

4. The beefy crunch burritos at Taco Bell are unbelievable. I think this is the first time I've ever liked something from T.Bell sober before.

5. The Fighting Sioux made the Final Four! (Just jokes. Hockey sucks.)


So I've got all that going for me. Which is nice. Big ups to all concerned parties yesterday and today. If you got no response it's because my phone was turned off most the day. I always feel extra loved the day that KU is knocked out of the tourney, even if it's mostly because people are honestly concerned I'm going to do something stupid after a loss (don't worry, thanks to 2008 my days of passing out on bridges are over.)

Keep on keepin' on.

Last Weekend By The Numbers

19.5 hours of sleep. In four nights. Paging Dr. Yee Ikes.

1,000 beers (approximate).....at least that's what my body felt like at the end of the weekend. In reality, it was 7 hours of drinking on Wednesday, 15 on Thursday, 18 on Friday, and 12 on Saturday. I'm no mathematician, but 52 hours of drinking vs. 19.5 of sleeping is not a good ratio unless you're Frank Sinatra.

3.5 tins of chew. In a sad indicator of our age and the influences women have on our lives, I was the only chewer present who didn't have to a) annoy his significant other by chewing; 2) hide his chewing from his significant other; or D) outright lie about chewing to his significant other.

18 tums (two of which were dipped in queso. Don't judge, I was out of chips and my heart was hurting. Can't let any queso go to waste-o, dude.)

2 times I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was having a minor heart attack. I think I'm going to stop making jokes about me dropping dead in the middle of a Chipotle burrito, because there seriously might be a heart attack coming. Real talk. Along those lines...

207 pounds is what I now weigh, the fattest I've ever been in my life. A good 10-12 pounds over my ideal fighting weight. We had a big weigh-off on Friday night during the party's collective drunkest point, and I don't think there were too many dudes who were proud of their weight. And yet, as I type this, I can only use the ring and pinky finger on my right hand, because I have Doritos chalk on my other fingers. What, I'm not supposed to eat while typing? Grow up Peter Pan, Count Chocula.

1 argument with Bergman over the weekend (for those who know us, that would've hit the under.) This one was because he and T.Nels pulled an all-nighter playing Wii, and Bergman kept coming into my sleeping area, blasting music (yes, I know 'Anna Sun' is phenomenal, but I'M TRYING TO EFFING SLEEP!) and trying to wake me up, ignoring the fact I just went to bed three hours ago. T.Nels has the ability to hole out from 123 yards and not scream at the top of his lungs....Bergman does not. Act like you've been there before.

Top 5 greatest gambling moment of my life, taking the Butler money line vs. Pittsburgh in the 2nd round. Then coming back on top of that with a huge bet at halftime when Butler was getting 9 points in the 2nd half. The last 2.2 seconds of that game, I ran the full gamut of emotions. Unbelievable. And just to brag a little more, since bragging is fun, here's something I wrote back before the season started, and proved to be very prophetic. "Get Pittsburgh and Villanova out of the top 10. Those two teams are horribly overrated, and I will spend the winter and spring making money gambling against them." It just took longer for me to cash in on hating Pittsburgh than Villanova, although both paid me nicely during the tourney.

9, by my count, different forms of gambling we participated in over the course of the weekend. There was gambling on tournament games, our suicide pool, our bracket draft, blackjack (hours and hours and hours of it...I would feel bad for the girls but I hope they understood that us out-of-staters don't have charitable gaming anymore-- small talk is overrated when there's a blackjack table mere feet away) Wii bowling, Wii golf, Wii three-point shootout, Farcle, electronic horse racing....and there were others that I wasn't a part of or think of right now. We've been spending most our lives, livin' in a Gambler's Paradise.

4.5 minutes of North Carolina's first round game that Horp (Carolina fan) got to watch before passing out at 6:45 pm. Friday afternoon got away from all of us a little bit, it definitely escalated quickly....but you would have to roofie at least 3-5 of my beers to make me pass out during a KU game. Tarrrrr! Heeeeeeeels!

90% of levels of 'Where's Waldo?' I got owned in by Finn, who has not yet turned 2 years old. (Supporting information: I road-tripped with Skye and Finn, who dropped me off and kept driving north to see family and friends.) In a mind-boggling display of memorization, Finn could pick out Waldo pretty much as I was turning the page. I hadn't looked at 'Where's Waldo?' for years, and was legitimately excited for the opportunity to return to my childhood, and Finn just beat me down. Humbling. (Side note: wouldn't a Grand Theft Auto or Halo-style version of 'Where's Waldo?' be awesome? Like there's all kinds of side missions and shooting and battling through a huge city, and you have to find Waldo in some room in the basement of a bombed out building in the middle of downtown? I feel like this could be awesome.)

15-20 other stories to tell, but they'd make no sense to anybody and wouldn't be funny if I tried to explain them. Curly Spice? No-Win Lynn? Top Shelv? Triple Double no assists? Where are the horses? You can Google anything? Quick hands? Sniffing nerf balls? Spider fingers? See, I told you they wouldn't make sense.

357 days until the next opening round of March Madness. This is my excited face.

And We're Baaaaaaaack!

.....But still recovering. Here, read this, while watching the video below, if it helps, courtesy of Gangel. It's one of the funniest things I've read recently, and one of those ideas that pisses me off because I should've thought of it first. You could go through a million rap songs and do this for every one.

RIP Nate Dogg. West Si-yeeeeeeed!

College Basketball Thoughts

During the longest three days of the year...

>> I'm pretty disappointed that BYU suspended the dude who was banging his girlfriend. Stupid honor code. I wanted to see my boy Jimmer make a run to the Final Four this year, and now they have little or no shot without Davies. Even though that whole Southeast region is rubbish.

>> I couldn't tell you the name of the woman who has season tickets next to ours at Phog Allen Fieldhouse, but I can confidently tell you the two things she hates the most in this world:

1. The Rock Chalk Dancers
2. Tyshawn Taylor

>> Ben Hansbrough? I thought we were done with the Hansbrough family. And he somehow managed to be a bigger douche than Tyler! The one thing I can say positive about Psycho T is that he didn't carry himself like he knew he was awesome. He was kind of unassuming in his douchebaggery. But you can tell that Ben is just convinced that he's awesome. I really hope KU gets a shot at him in the Elite 8. Brady will show him how a white starting guard should carry himself.

>> Kentucky's Terrence Jones is a decent NBA prospect, but I'm pretty convinced he's incapable of dribbling with his right hand. As a lefty myself, I'm reminded of a line from Chappelle Show where Chappelle, talking about Mark Fuhrman, says "Take it from somebody who says 'nigga' a lot....that nigga says 'nigga' ALL THE TIME!" In this case, take it from somebody who goes left a lot...Terrence Jones goes left ALL THE TIME!

>> Question of the Day: if your college basketball coach left tomorrow, who would you want to replace him? I enjoy this game because back when Ol' Roy was waffling on the Carolina job, I had my eye on Bill Self, and sure enough, that's who we got, and he's been amazing. Now, if Self were to leave (God forbid) I would want Jay Wright from Villanova.

>> It was nice to see Duke not get a cakewalk to the Final Four like they usually do. The bottom half of their bracket is weak, but Texas as a 4 seed is brutal. And Ohio St. got the KU treatment from last year, where the #1 overall seed gets the hardest region. That potential Sweet Sixteen is bruuuutally good (Ohio St., Kentucky, Syracuse, North Carolina.) While we're here, other teams seeded way too high are Florida, KState, Cincinnati, and West Virginia. Seeded too low: Utah St., Richmond, Kentucky, and Old Dominion.

>> For the first time in many years, I love love love KU's bracket. Notre Dame doesn't scare me, the 8-9 game doesn't feature a scary Northern Iowa type (during the selection show last year, as soon as I saw UNI in the 8-9 game opposite KU, I let fly a stream of F-bombs. This year I was smiling and clapping.) Louisville should be tough-- but usually a Bill Self team destroys full court pressure (just ask Missouri.) Really the only team that scares me is Purdue. Originally I was going to pick KU to lose in the early rounds, thought they were prime for an upset, but between the draw they got and the way they just crushed the Big 12 tourney, I might pick them to go to Houston after all. Similar to Syracuse last year, I don't necessarily think that KU is the best team in the country, but I think their 'A' game is better than anyone else's 'A' game. If they their best game, nobody else is beating them. Unfortunately, whether or not KU brings it every game has been their main problem this year.

In any event, this could be one of the more wide-open tournaments of my lifetime. If Duke had Kyrie Irving, they'd be head and shoulders above everyone else, but without him, they're no better than a handful of other teams. I put a small bet down on Ohio St. to win it all at the beginning of the season, so I'll dance with the one that brung me. Hopefully I'm wrong. Rock chalk.

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Tomorrow I head up to Fargo to watch the first two rounds with the old crew. Culligan reunion with Fundy, Noles, Horp, and Godfread, plus Bergman, Schneweis, Morley, and whoever else shows up over the course of the weekend. Four full days and nights of watching basketball, gambling, boozing, chewing, gambling, causing shenanigans, and gambling? I'll be looking like Mojo the helper monkey at the end of this trip.

Sold.

I was gonna buy the new Tiger Woods game this year anyway, but if there was ever ANY shadow of a doubt....it has now been removed. Maybe you have to be a golfer/video game player to appreciate it-- but to me, this video is as sexy as a 4-minute tribute to Selena Gomez. (Can someone find a link to that, so I can officially compare?)

TV

I'm watching more TV over the last couple months than I ever have before. As the immortal Slough would say after an impressive Kentucky Derby drinking session, "....my reasons....for this......are threefold....."

1. Back and knee issues are preventing me from playing as much golf and pickup basketball as usual.
2. There are more entertaining shows now than any other time I can remember.
3. It's much easier to watch shows at your leisure; before I could never make the commitment to be home at a certain time every week to watch a show, now there's a bunch of different ways to fit them in.

I get ripped on quite a bit since, on some shows, I'm over a year behind, since I wait and buy the DVD's. Every time a conversation about The Office breaks out, I have to ruin it by cutting in with a "Aap-ap-ap-ap-ap.....haven't seen it, don't say anything else!"

So here's the breakdown, just so you know which shows not to talk about around me, in case I haven't seen them:

>> Shows I wait and buy on DVD a year later, since they're my favorites and it gives me great pleasure to sit and watch the whole season in two or three days:

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia- Took over the top spot sometime last year. So good.

The Office- Still haven't even bought last years' DVDs yet, I haven't been hearing great things. But it still gets grandfathered in for its previous work.

How I Met Your Mother- The only traditional sitcom I truly love anymore. Once you watch shows without laugh tracks, and then you hear a laugh track, it's incredibly distracting. It's like all I can hear.

>> Shows I have DVR'd for me and watch shortly afterwards (one of these days I'll get DVR at my house again....I'm in no particular hurry):

Jersey Shore- Might not make this list next year. Ronnie and Sammi are single-handedly ruining this season. They're only fun to watch when he's roiding out and destroying her stuff and calling her 'bro.' Otherwise, they don't need to be dominating episodes.

The League- Sex & the City for dudes. Only with funny jokes.

>> Shows I watch online during my lunch break:

Parks and Recreation/Community- When Parks & Rec went on its couple-month hiatus, I thought that Community was turning into my new favorite....and then Parks & Rec came back and I watched a new episode and realized that was just silly. Not that Community isn't awesome, but Parks & Rec just cuts right to the core of me.

Modern Family- A couple more seasons like this, and Phil Dunphy moves into Michael Scott territory.

Family Guy- Only if I'm super bored. This show pretty much sucks now. As opposed to....

South Park- Just keeps on ticking. If anything, it's funnier now than it was in the first couple of seasons. I've always used baseball players to compare South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons, but the last couple years have kinda skewed the analogy. The Simpsons seasons 4-8 will never be touched, by anything, ever, but I haven't watched a new episode (besides a Treehouse of Horror) since 2003. Family Guy had a spectacular first five or six seasons, but has dropped off quickly since. And South Park has just gone along at about the same speed, with a few seasons better or worse than others, but every one at an All-Star level, for 14 years now.

White Collar used to be in this rotation, but I dropped it a few months ago. You ask, does this coincide with Tiffani Thiesen being mostly cut from the episodes? And I answer, you just may be right, my friend. You just may be right.


I get my fix now from watching old episodes of 90210. Hey boo. Holler at me.



>> Miscellaneous (how narcissistic is it to have a 'miscellaneous category'? I'm writing about what effing tv shows I watch. I know that blogs are, by their nature, extremely self-indulging, but this is bad even for me. I need to wrap this up soon, buuuuut I bet I won't.)

Mad Men- finally hopped on the bandwagon last fall and watched the first three seasons, I'm only one season behind now. Also, I very nearly picked up a smoking habit after about four episodes. Don Draper makes cigarettes look downright DELICIOUS.

Entourage- I've struggled to define this show for years. It's supposed to be funny....but I hardly ever laugh. It's supposed to be dramatic....but nothing ever really happens. I've watched almost every season....but I'm not sure if I actually enjoy the show or not. I watched it when I had free HBO, and occasionally I'll rent seasons for free at the Public Library. So I think I can finally define it: it's a show I'll watch, but never pay a single dollar to do so.

Big Bang Theory- for years, my mom would email me and tell me to watch this show. For years, I'd blow her off by telling her I didn't want to just jump in now, I had to start from the beginning (because my mom couldn't possibly like a show that's actually funny, could she? If it wasn't for Two and a Half Men, I'm pretty sure her favorite show would still be Home Improvement.) So finally for Christmas this year, she bought me the first two seasons on DVD, and I was sucked in by the first commercial break of the second episode. Now I'm gonna have to get the rest the seasons on DVD and get caught up. Dammit, Mom.

Degrassi: The Next Generation- I'm not even going to try and defend myself here (though I feel I could launch a good argument- the number of people I've successfully roped into watching Degrassi is surprisingly high.) I'll just say that maybe this is the reason why for most of my twenties, I avoided most TV shows. If I just ignore crappy shows, I won't get sucked in. But if I start watching one, even a little bit, most the time it's all over for me.

I'll Be In My Room Painting....FRIDAY Things

Last weekend Double D, Hendo, Wags and I ventured to Kansas City to go to Dave & Busters, me being a D & B virgin and all.....and it was AWESOME. Drinking and video games and shit-talking. If ever there was a place made for me, D & B's is definitely it. I don't care that we were among the only guys in the building that weren't a) 16 or younger, or b) accompanied by girls. We got accused by a couple of girls of being gay. My response: "Yup, totally. Big time gay. You're still not getting our cup full of tickets." Their boyfriends were chirping in our ear (good-naturedly) while we were playing the game where you throw footballs through different holes for different yardage, so we challenged them to a 4-on-4 game, cumulative team score, and beat them 2 out of 3. And we still didn't give their girls our tickets. You know how many friendship bracelets we can buy now?

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I had my first Taco Bell experience since finding out their meat was fake....it was the same as it ever was for me: delicious, but only because I was not sober. They could announce that they were adding another couple layers to the Crunchwrap Supreme, consisting of dog food and wet newspaper, and as long as I was at least 8 beers deep, I'd be OK with eating it. Also, we've all been saying it wrong for years. It's TACO Bell, emphasis on the 'taco', not 'bell.' Via the D.O.C. and J-Po.

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Well, it's official: my old man is on Facebook. Just a matter of time, really, as over the last couple of years he has followed in his oldest son's footsteps and become a pretty big internet junkie. He spends more time on gun enthusiast message boards than David Hasselhoff (is that how that joke goes? Maybe something about a beach? I always mess it up.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure I don't have to worry about my mom joining anytime soon, considering she just got a cell phone about six months ago. Exciting new technology, those cellular telephones.

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I vote that it's time to ditch the leaping shoulder bump celebration in sports. It's gone about as far as it can go. I know I've gotten my enjoyment out of it-- Ricky and I, upon the entrance of one of us into the multi-purpose court at Hyslop, used to sprint the length of the court to shoulder bump each other and celebrate another day of noon ball-- but that was like five years ago. Now, when starting lineups get introduced and they do little mini bumps to EVERY player on the team, or when every timeout is greeted with the bench players sprinting out onto the court to shoulder bump the players coming off (Kansas is guilty of both of these) it's just getting annoying. I'm not trying to piss in anyone's cereal bowl here, I've just had enough of it.








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Happy Friday. Only 10 more days until Selection Sunday. This is my excited face.

Eveningstar

Tomorrow is Senior Night for KU, meaning the last home game of my boy Brady Morningstar's career. Though he'll never have his jersey raised in Phog Allen Fieldhouse, it will be getting nailed to the Wall of Fame in my Fortress of Solitude as soon as the season is over. So he's got that going for him...which is nice. My Brady fandom has been a mostly solo affair (I'm about 93% sure I'm the only person in Lawrence besides his parents that owns a Morningstar jersey- I guess we'll find out during tomorrow's game) and it has spanned 4 phases:

Phase I, 2006- April 2008: Brady is a little-used Freshman, then redshirts during the National Championship season. The only reason he stands out at all (for me) is because he is the first Jayhawk to accept my friend request on Facebook. Yes, I friend request every incoming KU basketball player. Judge me if you will. At least I don't play Farmville.

Phase II, 2008-2009 season: Pretty much the whole team graduates/leaves for the NBA after the championship, and suddenly a ton of minutes are up for grabs. As word spreads during the preseason that Brady is in line for a starting spot, people around Lawrence start grumbling. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase "If Brady is still starting in March, it's gonna be a looooooong season" then I wouldn't even be writing this right now- I'd be in the Taco John's drive thru, buying enough six-pack-and-a-pound's to last me the rest of my life (don't worry, they're still good leftover.) So halfway joking around, I started defending Brady amongst my friends, which led to me paying special attention to his game, which led to me actually liking him. Brady ends up playing the second-most minutes on the team after Sherron Collins, leading the Big 12 in 3-point shooting percentage, and rocking the hell out of a baggy undershirt under his jersey.

Phase III, October 2009-January 2011: Brady gets a DUI right before the start of the season, Xavier Henry takes a ton of his minutes, Brady never really gets it going, does this during a technical foul free throw, and becomes a whipping boy among fans after the shocking 2nd round loss to Northern Iowa. Then he starts out 2010-11 ice cold, and the Brady Bashers double their efforts (yes they actually called themselves the Brady Bashers...the internet can be super gay sometimes.) Arguments on internet message boards are ferocious; there is a six-month stretch where about 75% of the comment sections on KU's website eventually dive into the Great Brady Debate, regardless of what the original article was about. Which of course makes me love him more.

Phase IV, Current: Brady rediscovers his shot, leads the Big 12 in 3-point shooting percentage (again), posts an absolutely stupid 7.5-1 assist-to-turnover rate in Big 12 play (for a somewhat flawed comparison, the NBA leader in this statatistic usually puts up around a 4-1 ratio) and merits legitimate discussion for making the All-Big 12 second team. Even the Brady Bashers are relatively quiet on the message boards-- although they still wish his minutes were going to Josh Selby or Elijah Johnson, because that would be better for KU "long term"--because Brady Bashers are usually not very intelligent basketball fans. Needless to say, this has been my favorite Brady Phase. Even though it has been sans baggy undershirt for the most part.

Here's hoping this phase lasts through April. Everybody enjoy your various teams' Senior Nights, it's one of the things that make college basketball so awesome.