You Put Two Of America's Most Wanted In The Same Muthafuckin' Place At The Same Muthafuckin' Time?

Full backstory:  when I was younger (younger meaning from 1996 all the way until probably about six months ago) I believed that Tupac faked his death.  I had done hours and hours of "research", to the point that when I based my final Lit paper in senior year of high school on this topic, I barely had to crack a book since I already knew pretty much everything.  (Yes, I got an A on the paper.  When I did my final speech on Tupac the next year in college, I got an A+ and a "Wow!" comment from the professor.  West Si-yeeeeeed!)



So I have to admit, when I watched the first couple seconds of this clip, my heart skipped a beat or two, since I had not heard anything about this hologram stuff at Coachella prior to loading this video. That was some realistic shit.  If this had occurred in 2003 (when I originally predicted Pac was going to resurface from faking his death) I would've started running around the room and calling all my friends before I could've realized it was a hologram and not really a human being. And can you imagine if I was actually at Coachella, with no prior information, under the influence of who knows what kinds of drugs, and all of a sudden Tupac just magically appears onstage?  That would've been my heart attack that I've been waiting on for a few years now.  The filthy grounds of Coachella, surrounded by hipsters and portapotties and cigarette butts and glowsticks and sunglasses being worn at night, would've been my deathbed.  Game over, man.  Game over.

OK, real talk:  I still think there's a chance that Tupac faked his death.  I'm not ready to give up that dream yet.

An Emotion Says A Thousand Words

Wanna know the exact moment when I was the most nervous in the last week or so? (Hint:  it wasn't when I got down on one knee and asked somebody to be my wife, until death do us part.)  It was when Bergman came to visit last weekend, we fired up the Sega for some NBA Jam, entered in our names, and it looked like our all-time records had been erased.  That was easily my biggest freakout of the week.  We hadn't lost a game since 2007, yo!

Don't worry though, turns out Bergman had put in the NBA Jam Tournament Edition cartridge, and our records were saved on the original.  Still, it was a rough 20 seconds or so before we found out.  Boomshakalaka!

Damn You, Brangelina

You're a real son of a bitch, Brad Pitt. One-upping me on our respective engagements like that. (Although I'll allow it if, when Brad got down on one knee and held up the ring box, Angelina did her best impression of Brad's weird faces during the ending of Seven. "What's in the baaaawwwwx?!?!?!?!" That would be awesome. If it didn't go down like that, then I'm still pissed at them.)




Scattered thoughts from getting engaged:

-- Ring purchasing, somewhat surprisingly, was a generally positive experience. As long as you're OK with the fact that you're spending thousands of dollars to put a small object on someone else's hand-- as opposed to buying a Golden Tee for your basement, paying for a lifetime supply of Chipotle burritos, or having the greatest weekend in Vegas EVER. It was kinda fun walking into the ring shop, being supplied with free beers, and spending some time learning about Emerald cuts and balancing carats and all that hullabaloo. I went in knowing nothing....and left knowing slightly more than nothing. After I made my selection and signed away my dream of owning my own Golden Tee anytime in the next decade, Gem Diamond and I slapped hands and exclaimed "Bada BING!....Bada BOOM!" so hopefully Christine's finger doesn't turn green now. I don't want to have to get Kung Fu Screech involved.




-- In order to lure Christine to a nice hotel in Kansas City without making her suspicious, I had to tell her that we were meeting Dunph, since he routinely stays in KC hotels for work, and our usual plan is that he leaves me a room key in case he isn't done working for the day yet. (TRUST me, involving Dunph in something as sacred as a marriage proposal hurts me more than it hurts you. It was too perfect a setup to pass up though.) Christine was so in shock that after saying yes, her first question was "Soooo are we still meeting Dunph?" and her second was "Are we still going to Jack Stack for dinner?" I think her brain was just firing off random questions at that point, like when Mel Gibson's wife is dying in Signs. Swing away, Merrill.

(Also, as far as Kansas City BBQ is concerned, there's Jack Stack, and there's everything else. Anyone who says any other place is better is either lying or wrong.)

-- Something I will laugh at when thinking about this night, probably forever: Teens is tall and skinny, sometimes wears glasses, and has a red-and-white-striped shirt that she wears from time to time. She made the mistake of wearing it the first time she came to North Dakota to meet a bunch of my friends last year, and within an hour she had picked up the nickname Waldo, for obvious reasons.


Since she had no idea last weekend about what was going to happen, and she wasn't too concerned about what she was wearing....she was sporting the Waldo shirt again. I was on the fence on whether or not I wanted a photographer there, ultimately deciding against it. If I would've known she was gonna be getting her Waldo on when I proposed to her, I absolutely would've brought one along, mostly for comedic purposes. That shirt is awesome.

-- If I was doubting my proposal at all (I wasn't) and needed a confirmation as to why I wanted to marry this girl (I didn't) I received one almost immediately, anyway. After the initial excitement of her saying yes died down, we hightailed it downstairs to the hotel bar. We were housing beers probably within 10 minutes of her saying yes. Hey, we have plenty of time to consummate this thing later...but right now we need to get down to the bar. Free cocktail hour ends at 7:30, bro!

-- I have a friend (who shall remain nameless) who has a girlfriend who is, um, ready to be proposed to. This friend and his GF also happen to be visiting soon, and he requested that I wait to propose until after they visit, so as not to send his woman into Proposal Frenzy (as is wont to happen with girls in this situation, as every dude on the planet who has ever been in a relationship knows.) After initially agreeing, I ended up not waiting for them to visit first. It was in the aftermath of me telling him my plan, and that it was happening immediately, that he wrote this suggestion for my proposal, which I found hilarious:

“Teens, you have been the brightest light in my life since I met you, sure I’ve had a best friend since I was 6 years old, but you mean so much to me and I just couldn’t wait the obligatory Best Friend Two Week Buffer after purchasing this fine ass ring. You look a bit confused but don’t worry, Dunph’s not here, this was the first of many lies I will tell you for the rest of our lives, until death do us part. And I couldn’t be happier spending it with anyone else. Marry me Teens and let’s get rose petal stains all over this bed!”

Life Support

You know that scene at the end of Smokin' Aces, where Ryan Reynolds is in the hospital, holding the life support cords of the two bad guys, searching his soul for a few seconds before saying fuck it and pulling both the cords? (I'm not offended if that scene doesn't ring a bell-- I'm probably in the 99th percentile of Smokin' Aces enjoyment. It's one of the few things I can't successfully recommend to people, along with the movie Hot Rod, the song 'Tom Hark' by the Piranhas, and getting people to call Bud Lights 'BL Smoothies' (copyright Gangel) and Busch Lights 'BL Rockies'. Oh well.)

ANYWAY, I'm Ryan Reynolds right now with this blog. I should probably yank the cord, but I'm not quite to the point where I just say fuck it and pull. I clearly don't have enough time or willingness to keep this thing entertaining anymore (I'm sure you've noticed the sharp decline of both quantity and quality the last six months)....but after almost six years, it would be a weird feeling to not have this outlet for random thoughts anymore. Mostly I'm just bored with listening to myself.

Stay tuned, I guess.

2012 All-Ugly Team

Bench:

Tyler Zeller, North Carolina. Both Carolina and the Ugly Team loses Zeller's ears to graduation this year.

Mike Bruesewitz, Wisconsin. He shaved his Carrot Top 'fro, which kept him out of the starting lineup this year.

Brandon Triche, Syracuse. To quote Dr. Dre, circa 1992: "Gap teef in yo' mouf, so my dick's gotsta fit!"

Matthew Dellavedova, St. Mary's. Looks like he should be playing someone's bratty little brother in an 80's teen comedy. The little brother who is constantly trying to peek in his sister's bedroom when she has a slumber party or something like that.

David Stockton, Gonzaga. Classic case of a dude growing shitty facial hair in an attempt to differentiate themselves from a famous father/sibling/son. His 'stache is almost like the hidden object in a Magic Eye picture...you have to concetrate and squint really really hard to see it.

Teeng Akol, Western Kentucky. With a forehead like that, he had a receding hairline by age 6.

Brady Heslip, Baylor. Let's not get it twisted: if he played for KU, he'd definitely be one of my top 5 favorite Jayhawks of all-time. Let's see: he's got shitty, greasy-looking hair that he constantly has to brush out of his eyes; he's an unathletic white guy who used to be 30 pounds heavier and still somehow got recruited to a D-I school; he does almost literally nothing besides shoot open 3's; and he loves to throw up the Three Goggles after makes. The more I think about it, he'd probably be my favorite Jayhawk ever. Still time to transfer, dude....

Starting Five:

Ryan Kelly, Duke. If I ever saw him on the street, the only thing I could ever think to say to him would be "Nuhhhhhhhhhhhh."



J'Covan Brown, Texas. Left early for the NBA, presumably because the feedbag at his locker ran out of oats, and Coach Barnes wouldn't refill it. (Get it? Cause he looks like a horse? I know, that one sucked. Whaddya want from me? It's Saturday morning, I'm hungover as balls.)


Deniz Kilicli, West Virginia. Still ugly as hell, but he's definitely been beefing up since he got to school; he could put me in the hospital with both arms tied behind his back. Let's hope that cavemen don't know how to use Google yet.


Hugh Greenwood, New Mexico. Remember Hermie the Elf from the Rudolph movie? The one who didn't want to be an elf, he wanted to be live at the Island of Misfit Toys and be a dentist or whatever? Turns out he did neither-- he grew up and played basketball at the University of New Mexico.



Anthony Davis, Kentucky. For the first time in All-Ugly Team history, the Captain is also the best player in the country. It's tough to make a original unibrow joke about Davis, since the whole country has been making them for seven months now, but I'll try: it looks like Gordon from Sesame Street had a kid with one of the puppets.

You Know, The Nazis Had Pieces Of Flair Too

You know in Office Space, when Peter has his interview with The Bobs and while talking about his lack of work ethic, tells them "In a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual, work." That quote reminds me of KU in this tournament so far. In five games, they've probably only played about 20-25 minutes of real, actual, basketball. The last time they had a lead at halftime was against the 15-seed Detroit in the first round. Against Purdue, they trailed for 39 minutes of the game. Against Ohio St., 37 minutes. They were neck-and-neck with Carolina until finishing the game on a 12-0 run. Despite playing their C- or D+ game for over 75% of the tourney, somehow it's been enough to get them to the championship game. Forget about KU, I don't know if I've watched ANY college basketball team in my lifetime have a run of games like this in the tournament. So weird.

For the record, I don't think they can pull that same routine off against Kentucky. The (W! I! L! D!) 'Cats are too good for KU to spot them a huge lead and hope to come back against a defense that is as good as the Jayhawks. But for the first time in my basketball-watching life, if my team does fall behind early in a tournament game, I won't immediately look to mash the panic button or jump off the ledge. This team is mentally tough enough to keep it close. If KU can just keep within striking distance, I wouldn't bet against them the last stretch of the game.

Say, maybe, being down 9 with 2:12 left against a John Calipari-coached team in the national championship?



And if Kentucky does win, and they're crowned National Champs? Well that may be.....but at least I didn't sleep with Lumbergh.

(Full circle with Office Space, bro. Totally nailed it. I was gonna wrap up with comparing Kentucky's program to Initech, and how they represent "everything that is soulless and wrong!" but figured that I already got that rant out of my system late Saturday night when I was hammered. On the phone. With Christine's mom. Dammit.)