All Aflutter

I am in a high frenzy, a state of damn near TerpRiot. It is true that it has been difficult for me, lo these many years since the departure of Our Lord and Savior Gary Williams and His Prophet Juan Dixon, to get excited about Maryland hoops, at least the testosterone version (I still adore the women, though I'm a tad heartbroke about Miss Lexie Brown's deeply personal decision to transfer, and a tad furious about the part of it where she felt she had to transfer to Those People, but it's her fucking business, and Brenda Frese will win more NCAA titles during the remainder of Miss Brown's NCAA eligibility than Lexie will, so WTFever, kid). The move to the Big Can't Count Conference didn't help my ennui over the Williams-less, post-Dixon, post-The-Alien-Steve-Blake guy Terps.

But thanks in part to the outstanding work of YFWP's Sports department, I am pumped. Fuck Georgetown in the eye. This is fucking awesome, the first time Maryland has played Georgetown in the regular season in 42 fucking years, which brings us to why I'm in a fiercely tribal state:

Hyper UMd Marketers Recreate a Period Photo

Our cheerleaders and theirs, courtesy of the ever-sedate local Fox outlet

Elmore and Mcmillen in groovy pants

Mister Elmore (from his personal files, apparently)

Foldout poster of Mister Lucas from the 1973 program

Thanks to Steinberg and to YFWP for excavating this awesome stuff. Go Terps.

Reminder to you young persons: We lived this. Sure, we had an onion on our belts because that was the style, and chickies didn't have the right to vote or drink unless they put out for it, and bellbottoms were the law. But it was what it was, and we were better people for it. Fuck Georgetown in the eye. Go Terps.

Autism Awareness Day

Yup. You aware? Good. Vaccinate your children. If you think that's a bad idea, then shut the fuck up and vaccinate your children. If you're not willing to shut the fuck up and vaccinate your children, shut the fuck up and vaccinate your children. Then shut the fuck up some more and vaccinate your children.

That's about all I have time for this year. Last year. 2012. 2009, and 2008. The boy? He's awesome, and I love him more than breath its own self. Yeah, he's still autistic. Whatever. Love to Kimmah and Sam and Swami and Max and to you, whoever you are.

In news of very nearly equal importance, the Maryland women are returning to the Final Four. I would say this at any time of any day of any year, but more pointedly this week, at every moment of every day: Fuck Notre Dame. Fuck UConn. Fuck Stanford (special for His Wiseness: I actually rooted for you last night).

Peace. Unless you're Notre Dame, UConn, or Stanford, of course.

Hate Good

I am a man of peace, with exceptions. A horrible man. A spiteful man.

A not very nice man. After all, it's not this child-meme's fault that he has bad parents. Does this lessen the gladness in my heart tonight, or any night when this meme plays?

No. No, it does not.

But let's rewrite my spite, because hatred leads to bitterness, and bitterness leads to Jar Jar Binks. Let's leave that poor, possibly presumptively innocent child out of this. Let's go here instead.

Ratface, Chris Collins, and Wojo all facepalming to cover their tears. With an enraged Dookiegirl looking on. A little while ago, I raised with a fellow Terp the spectre of how joyful it might've been to bang UberTerp Bonnie Bernstein 20 years ago, when she was an actual Terp gymnast. This picture? Is even better.

Look, I've written before about my mitochondrial Terp love, my secret wish to have Juan Dixon's babies, my undying love for the Terp National Championship team of 11 years ago, my disdain for the post-Cole Terp teams, the ascendance of the Terp women, the thing that died a little in my heart when Gary Williams decided he was sick and tired of this shit.

That doesn't mean that beating Dook isn't fun. Rock on, Dez Wells.

Go Terps. Fuck Dook.

Also: J.J. Redick still drinks his own urine.

DCU 3-2 FC Yellow

Hey! Did you know the land grant university of the state of Maryland has a football team? It's true! And because their coach is a third-rate bully and a rinky-dink moron who isn't qualified to coach in Pop Warner, it lost its homecoming game today to the same school that never beat us when Phil Rivers was its 4-year starting quarterback!

Hey! Did you know the land grant university of the state of Maryland has a futbol team? It's true! And they've won a whole shitload of games, including one against the land grant university of two states south, last night! In fact, they're ranked number one, and they're undefeated so far!

Hey! Did you know I'm a fucking moron? That's because I deleted two hours of sequential texts to BFF, sent during the course of the game, in effect live blogging the agony and the ecstasy, and I can't recover them!

Which is a shame, because there would be a lot to say if I could remember any of it, but I can't. Here's what I remember:

Edwin Jurisevic is a referee for MLS. He is a dope. One might not infer this from the card count; I think Columbus (FC Yellow) had four, and we had none. All of FCY's cards, and at least two more, were deserved, as would have been two DCU penalty kicks (one when Pontius was tripped at the 18 while carrying the ball, early--the first act of a game-long theme of Pontius getting mugged, unavenged; another when Neal was thugged down near the bottom left side of the box while carrying the ball, sometime in the range of the 80th minute). The fuckface Jairo Arrieta should've gotten a second yellow for mugging Pontius sometime between the 75th and 85th minutes. On the other side, and not to the dope's credit, he missed two clear opportunities to book DCU players, and one of them could, in some universes, have been a red to Andy Najar, who is a compact little sack of sporadically directed aggression and teen angst.

But enough about that, because what almost caused the stoppage-time loss that I documentably predicted in the 85th or 86th minute was DCU's persistent failure to make anything of possession. The box score says Columbus won possession 52.9%-47.1%. I find that really, really hard to believe. I said to Ilse on the drive home that I swore it was close to 60-40 in DCU's favor. It seemed like we were in possession a lot, with the usual concomitant missed shots, easy giveaways, and resulting stupid fouls. And the backpassing remains insane.

Backpassing makes sense under two circumstances, one of them involving immediate danger of a turnover. The other is when, as you advance the ball, the defense is too packed in for you to sensibly continue the advance. You backpass and hold enough to draw the defense out to apply pressure. Then, you break, and attack--quickly. It's that last bit that has eluded DCU teams, dozens of times a game, for the last 5 seasons. It makes no sense to backpass and then restart the advance at a pace that lets the other team catch up and repack the defense (and let's not even discuss the countless episodes of inept backpassing followed by stupid turnovers and goooooollllls). None. I screamed at Tommy Soehn about it, I screamed at Curt Onalfo about it, and it's only fair that I say this: Goddammit, Saint Benny, you stupid motherfucker, stop fucking coaching them to backpass and then build slow. What the fucking fuck is wrong with you, other than that you learned this fucking repulsive horseshit from Soehn and Onalfo? Didn't Saint Piotr learn you better? Can't you fucking stand there, far closer to this abomination in the sight of the futbol gods than I am, and fucking learn from this? Wake the fucking fuck up, dood. I really, really want to believe that you're not still, after two fucking seasons, in way the fuck over your incredibly short head. I really do. Do please provide countering evidence. Soon.

While I'm ranting at Saint Benny: learn to fucking man manage, you fucking twerp. It was sheer bloody luck that two of your three subs were involved in the spectacular and surprising winning goal and reversed my aforementioned prediction. And why you're stuck on the chickenhearted and immobile Lionardo Pajoy utterly eludes me. But fairness demands a respectful concession, too. While you started bringing subs way later than you should have, and the only reason I can think that you would've subbed out Chris Pontius is that he was getting mugged and the whistle guy wasn't doing anything about it, placing Branko up top turned out real well. I'm not gonna say it was genius, because there's no way in hell you anticipated that a late breakaway would be composed of Louis Fucking Neal and Branko Fucking Boskovic. No. Way. In. Hell. But it turned out real well, so thanks. As it happens, it's the only reason why I'm keeping my religion and referring to you in the proper form, your sainthood, Sir.

But Jeebus, Pajoy is shite. He far more often than not shies away from challenges, he has no idea how to move off-ball, and his footwork isn't as dazzling as he and his mom think it is. Santos has returned from whatever pre-injury vacation he took to the land of relatively smart soccer players, and Saint Benny's fucking fixation on two holding midfielders is beyond comprehension. As he lets two designated players sit on the fucking bench. Jesus H Wobbly Crutched Titty Fucking Christ, that's fucking stupid.

The win puts DC in a playoff spot for the first time in 5 years. Thanks, boys. I can't say well done; it wasn't. It was sloppy, and you were very, very lucky that Warzycha and FC Yellow got cocky and took a chance they shouldn't have taken. Your possession is shite, your finishing is fuckawful, and you let Will Hesmer Andy Gruenebaum look like Tim Fucking Howard. But thank you very kindly, and it's about fucking time. Tradition!

Update/correction:  I'd have sworn they announced Hesmer as the starting keeper for FCY, but Ilse points out that the MLS site says that Andy Gruenebaum. So thanks Ilse, and fuck both FCY keepers anyway.

Another update:  16 minutes of texts rescued by Himself, here. It should go without saying that my favorite is:

91:00 HOLYSHIT BRANKO BREAKAWAY LOB TO NEAL GOOOOOOOLLLLLLL 3-2.

The aforementioned prediction of doom ("reeks of losing in stoppage") was, in fact, in the 86th minute. I started bitching about Saint Benny in the 77th. I was clearly pretty despondent from the time DCU equalized, up to the winning goal.

Old Loves

They dedicated the basketball court at Comcast to Gary Williams last night. As I've noted before, my ardor for Terphoops has cooled since days of yore. That doesn't mean I've lost the fire completely, especially not on Duke night (the outcome was the same as ever--Duke pwn3d us).

Opinions on this court-naming thing are pretty consistent. Gary won us a title. But there's one detractor in every bunch, and ours is, of course, Lefty Driesell, who emphasizes that he doesn't think it should be his name on the court, which is good, since his is, as I understand it, already on Georgia State's court. Stupid fucking cracker.

I think I've noted before that I'm not fond of yellow, and these are yellow days at Comcast. That's fucking idiotic. But the students are still there, in spades, and last night they yellowed out:

If there wasn't a turtle, I'd think it was Tech

And the fever hasn't broken. This may be cleaner than "J.J. Reddick Drinks His Own Urine", but it's just as effective.

The noblest of sentiments

My generation notes that J.J. still hasn't issued a denial. Go Terps.

The thing its ownself

Lives of Legend, Part the Next

Things happen fast in My Local Locality. First this, which seems like yesterday rather than like two weeks ago, and then last night I started to wish death of a different sort for this guy, who is the only plausible explanation for Lord Voldemort and a fucking gaggle of Deatheaters swarming My Local Hockey Team in such blitzkrieg fashion. But today broke the barriers of my emotional control. Today, I weep for reals.

Long ago and far away, I was in love with a German film star¹. No, wait. Long ago and far away, I was in love with a college basketball team. Sometime along about 1997, I actually sold my soul to dark powers for a single wish, that one day, during my lifetime, the University of Maryland mens' basketball team would win the NCAA title. I had finished my undergraduate degree at Maryland after 20 years of alternating struggle and lassitude and struggle, and my then-wife Gamara rewarded me with season basketball tickets in legendary Cole Field House, the scene of this watershed college basketball moment and my college graduation and a whole bunch of other stuff.²

They were great days for Terps basketball; the team had recovered from the horror of Len Bias' death and the ensuing nightmare of cheating and probation, and there were exciting and fun players--Joe Smith, Keith Booth, Laron Profit, Obinna Ekezie, Steve Francis, and Terrence Morris, to name just a few--along with a bunch of guys who were just plain old scholarship basketball players. The late 90s were marked by consecutive NCAA tournament appearances (the streak went to 11), many of which ended in flames, prematurely. A personal favorite of mine is the year Laron Profit and Terrell Stokes blew curfew at the ACC tournament in Greensboro, probably chasing cheerleaders, and their subsequent punishment of 10 minutes' benching cost the team an early exit to some hosers like UC Santa Barbara or the College of Charleston. But Gary Williams did the right things, and the team progressed and endured as one of the elite teams in the NCAA.

It was some of the most fucking fun I've ever had, and it got better in 1998, when a young man named Juan Dixon entered Maryland on a basketball scholarship. Juan had a hard-luck story; both of his parents died of AIDS, and he was raised by his grandparents. He was quite a find, and a Baltimore kid, a Terp recruiting dream (it is a shame and a poverty that, historically, limited numbers of Baltimore kids have ended up playing at Maryland). He was skinny--Jeebus, he was a fucking rail--and he took a lot of work to love during his freshman year. He was joined in the backcourt the next year by The Alien Steve Blake, the pure point guard we'd always wanted, the second coming of John Lucas, except really, really gawky. Painfully gawky. Yeah, you can more'n likely break that code.

The 2000-2001 season felt like the time. I believe that was when I first realized that I would, if it were biologically possible, have Juan Dixon's babies.³ The team lost to Duke in the ACC tournament semifinals in Atlanta (Gamara and I attended), and then made it to the Final Four, where they lost...to Duke. This was also the season that made January 27 a dark day on every calendar to follow; leading a game at home by 10 points with 55 seconds left, Maryland choked to send the game into overtime, eventually losing the game. You don't need me to tell you who the opponent was. I think it's the only time in my life I ever thought I'd be trampled to death.

It all came together for the team the next season; they secured a number one seed in the NCAA tournament and cruised through, winning their only NCAA Championship and sealing the permanent loss of my soul. Juan Dixon was the tournament's most valuable player. They were...beautiful, losing only three games all season. I shiver when I remember the passion, the energy, the drive, the Terp-love. It was nirvana. It was bliss. It was Festival. I will never feel that way again.⁴

The program went into decline thereafter, partially victimized by success--Gary was never the same recruiter after his success with that team, particularly Saint Juan--and partially victimized by attitude and circumstance and those damned kids today. I'm talking about you, John Gilchrist. And you, Chris McCray, you stupid motherfucker (so stupid that he couldn't maintain a passing average in Maryland's Criminal Justice program, which basically consists of four years of directing traffic and writing parking tickets--which fall like rain on the Maryland campus, like at so many other campuses; some tickets were so cheap that it was worth it to me to pay for a ticket once every week or two to avoid a half-mile cross-campus walk to class).

And the man has his detractors, among them the unfathomably evil Debbie Yow (you find her) and, when he's in a pissy mood, BFF. To be sure (and to be fair), I've had days where I was no longer in thrall.

But that year...that moment...I know where I was and who I was with, I remember the Final with unbelievable clarity (I have done a fair amount of damage to my memory capacity over the years), and I guard and treasure the memory of those two hours or so with a ferocity that will never flame out. And I'd still have Juan Dixon's babies, and I still feel a warm fuzzy when I see The Alien Steve Blake on the television, even in his remarkably stupid Los Angeles Lakers uniform, and I'll always have that picture of Senior Night (see footnote 3, below). But it was all possible because of one guy, and for that deed, he'll always have me as a fan.

Thanks, Gary. Thanks for all of it, even for the shit. I'll never have a ride like that again.

Oh, and y'all know who you are. Check in down below and do the right thing.

¹ Hi honey.
² The last of which came in late February 2002, on Senior Night against Virginia, a moment memorialized in a panoramic photograph later framed and given to me as a gift by my then-future in-laws (Ilse's parents). When one looks closely at the front row of the end zone, behind the band, the location of my seats, one can pretty easily make out me...and Gamara. Oops.
³ That hasn't changed.
⁴ You might believe this is a bit tragic. You believe wrong.

Things to Blog About

There's definitely shit to blog about. It's soccer season, and we finally just went ahead and went in on season tickets with this guy, since he started making scary noises about dropping his two perpetually unused tickets that have allowed me to sit behind Barra for years, mostly for free. I'm still fascinated with hockey--more in a minute. The saddest thing ever happened last night, and thanks to Kristie Tolliver, Master Assassin, and her running buddy Marissa Coleman for a great four years--it's a dreadful shame for it to end on one off night against a red-hot, well-coached team with a good game plan, but it is what it is. I have a thought-wank percolating in me about culture, which isn't a post yet because it pretty much boils down to some stunning obviousness, even though I'm pretty sure there's something profound-sounding in it somewhere.

But I'm tired and busy and work bites a dick, so I'm keeping it to a quick hockey post. Steinbog tells us about some Pennsylbama metal band and its "Crosby Sucks" anthem, and interviews the band. That's all just mildly entertaining. They want Crosby to "fall in a volcano." So do I. Commonality of interest is great. They hit their interviewing stride, though, when Steinberg asks them about their next Caps song:

Sports Bog: So what's the next Caps-related anthem?
LJ: These things just happen. It could be a "how to" guide on playing defense, sung directly to Jeff Schultz. Or maybe a verbal roadmap on getting out of skating circles
for Michael Nylander. We'll have to see...
P-rap: Probably a song about Brooks Laich beating down Walker, President of Texas.
OBM: A cover of the National Anthem, except we'll be screaming OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!' after every line.

Change "Schultz" to "Jurcina" (though I respect my fellow Caps fans who would just as soon keep as Schultz, or change it to Erskine), and that's a pretty good cover of the very few things about the Caps that make me insane.

Stay tuned. The thought-wank on comparative culture is coming. And when it's done and the mess is cleaned up, I'll turn it into something postable.

Fear the Turtle for All the Wrong Reasons

I got no time to respond to bait, but events conspired independently to ensure that, eventually, I had to post on the Maryland Terrapins gruesome attempt at a mens' basketball team this season.

It's like this: I lost interest in Terps basketball about 4 years ago, when this jackass was running the point. Subsequent events have vindicated my disdain for the guy; he's been cut by teams in Israel, France, Latvia, and the NBA's developmental league (Idaho Stampede!). His arrogance infected subsequent Terp teams with a plague of selfish, boneheaded dipshittery of the sort that should not be tolerated by fans of any respectable ACC team.

In the years since the chesty little twit (with whose name I won't even infect my blog) left town a year early to go undrafted by the NBA, Maryland has failed to make the NCAA tournament (a minimum requirement for fans of any respectable ACC team) more than it's succeeded. And Maryland has sucked in the Not Inthe Tournament when it's gotten in, too, losing to teams like Manhattan College (in its own house). Badly. See here, for instance.

The disease has spread to the coach. Look, Gary Williams has given me many happy moments, including the one fucking national title I asked for in my time on this Earth. I'm never going to support firing his drunk, barely-legal-cheerleader-loving ass. On the other hand, Our Blessed Juan Dixon's* success in life has endowed Gary with the sense that he can take any kid off of any playground in America and turn him into a two-guard who will lead a team to the Final Fucking Four, and really, the more felonies the kid's committed, the better.

This is not acceptable coaching behavior. Gary has utterly lost it. He can't recruit, his teams can't rebound, and his teams don't listen to him. The latest, a squabble with the athletic department over whose fault all this is, is the fucking end. While I will not support his termination, I certainly urge his retirement. Immediately. Before I get a hankering to visit the M Circle.

And yeah. I'm off to the hockey game tomorrow.

*And seriously, if you say one bad word about Juan Dixon, ever, within my perceptive range, I will fucking hurt you. I will track you down like Belkar the Sexy Shoeless God of War and I will hurt you. I will fucking cut you, motherfucker. In fact, go to my comments section right now and say nice things about Juan Dixon, even if you don't fucking know what I'm talking about, y'hear? Do it. Now!

Fear the Turtle

Your 2008 Mens NCAA Soccer Champions.

Two in four years. Suck it, bitchez. Sasho Cirovski roolz and you don't.

Maryland Terrapins Mens Basketball, 2007-2008

Note how the turtle assumes the inferior position in the food chain here, as in life.

Go Terpchix.

Die Terps Die

I am watching a college basketball game on television. One of the teams is my beloved alma mater. I wouldn't know it to look at them, though; while there is a red team on the floor, it's not mine, it's State. My team is dressed in unis that render a look suspiciously like that of Tech.*

We must die. We must lose. We are not a yellow team.

Our student body (motto: "Hey! You suck!") has bought into this myth. They are wearing yellow t-shirts. Of course, they are all stupid, and we are, in reality, The University of Long Island, Prince Georges County campus. But usually they're smart enough to wear our actual colors.

There is a technical reason for the allowability of yellow gridkit; we actually have four school colors, since the Calvert family, progenitors of our state, apparently ate a lot of acid before they designed their crest (which served as the basis for our state flag).

Technical or not, this is wrong. The style is ugly, the color is wrong.

The officials, of course, are teh suck. But that's another rant.

We must die. We must lose. Fucking yellow team.

*Glossary: You should already know this, but there is only one State (it's in Raleigh) and only one Tech (it's in Atlanta).

They Can't Be Giants

I really owe it to two beloved friends to try to be gentle about this, and I'm really gonna try. The thing is that Patriots fans, with the absolute exception of my two friends who know who they are, are total fucksticks. Even my two beloved friends, who know who they are, couldn't help spending the weekend taunting God. And yet, I really don't like seeing them suffer along with the millions of douchebags with whom they have to share a football team. I very nearly hurt for them. In fact, I do hurt for them, even though the Patriots and all but two of their fans are fucktards.

Many of you know that I am all about the schadenfreude, and about the haterade, at least when it comes to sports. And politics. And people who piss me off. And dogs. And those kids on my yard. And that fucking Elmo video that Bam-Bam wants to watch over and over again.

But I digress.

This is way different. It is true that they had it coming, all of them, the fucksticks (who are simply fucksticks), the Patriots (who are insufferable asshats), and my two beloved friends, who couldn't stop taunting God despite their best efforts and the fact that they are not, in any way, fucksticks.

It is true that it is sad that they didn't see it coming. I considered stopping it, I really did. I gently and passive-aggressively tried to get them to respect Elisha, even a tiny bit just to offset their complete lack of unconfidence. But they couldn't do it, and honestly, it's hard for me to blame them. I mean, c'mon. Eli Manning? Get the fuck real.

And yet? And yet? They taunted God.

My Freestate homies--one of whom knows and loves my two beloved friends--understand this concept, to their very bones. It is the obligation of every Maryland fan to hang his or her head and steadfastly declaim any chance that any Terrapin team in a revenue-producing sport will ever win so much as a game of tiddlywinks, ever. In this way, we once-in-a-lifetime win the NCAA tournament, or a basketball game in Cameron, or even perhaps a football game against your sister's Girl Scout troop. It's an important obligation, one that every fan of any sporting endeavor should embrace, especially this guy when he's contemplating the potential fates of a certain greatest football team (Vamos!). It's why nobody but me knows that I sorta thought the fucking Giants might pull this off; I kept my fucking mouth shut. I freely admit that it helped that I hate the fucking fuck out of the fucking Giants, too, but that's a stumper; I kept my fucking mouth shut because I didn't want to jinx the fucking Giants? WTFF?

But I digress. It's simple. Don't taunt God, kids. She'll make a beeline for your afterquarters every single time.

And peace out to my two beloved friends who gracefully and good-humoredly sat through an evening of being tormented by fans of the fucking Giants and even bigger fans of schadenfreude.

Maryland 82, UNC 80

On the other hand, sometimes hate tastes good.

Yum.

Fat Man's Head In A Circle of Flowers

Memes circle their prey. Take this meme right here, which I first propagated 376 days ago. I gave up on it after a time, because in spite of Ralph Friedgen's fat but empty head, the football Terps ended up not all too bad last season. But we're back. I once again want Ralph Friedgen's fat but empty fucking head impaled on a stake in the middle of the M Circle as a warning to his kind. A very tall stake. And I want it right fucking now.

Back on Satan's birthday, a birthday he shares with his father-in-law...shit, I'm so pissed off at that fat stupid twat I'm talking about myself in the third person.

My father-in-law and I have the same birthday, and on that day (which this year really sucked pretty fucking fantabulously, because my stepson has the same birthday too, and being a reasonable and kind person I was absolutely deferential about who came first, that day) my wife and my mother-in-law gave us tickets to the Maryland homecoming game, against Virginia, a game that was just played, this very day. My in-laws are, you see, Motherfucking Hoos Fans, in addition to a few other faults I am forced by common decency to forgive. Last time we did this, two years ago, the Hoos were a total suckjob and Maryland won by something on the order of 30 points.

This evening, Maryland dominated the first quarter, didn't lose a lot of ground in the second quarter, sucked but basically held in the third quarter, and spent the fourth quarter putting itself in a position, thanks to the Fat Man's ill-placed cockiness, followed by unfathomably ill-placed gutlessness, to lose the game by a single point on three consecutive questionable calls in the last two minutes of the game. Should all three calls have gone the Hoos' way? I have no idea. They only show you the replay once, inside the stadium, if at all. This is probably a reasonable riot-control measure. I will leave it to Sasha to weigh in on this, if she happened to be watching this nationally televised disaster.

Should any football team go for it on fourth and one at their opponent's 35-yard line with 6 minutes left in the game? Let me rephrase the question. What kind of fat fucking pussy of an inept excuse for a fucking Division I football coach doesn't go for it on fourth and one at his opponent's 35-yard line with 6 minutes left in the game and a 5-point lead, at home, on Homecoming Night?

Ralph Fucking Friedgen, that's the fuck who. Dribbling fucking idiot.

And another thing: the University of Virginia Band must die. Die die die. I suggest public sacrifice on the intramural athletic fields at Route 1 and Campus Drive. Y'know, just below the M Circle. While we're impaling Ralph Friedgen's fat but empty fucking head on a stake in the middle of it. Soon. Cocksucking, chicken-bucket swilling, lard-brained sack of wasted protoplasm.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

Fuck.

Update (7 hours later): Fuck.

A Smoking Pair of Boots

That's all that's left of Minions' bracket. It became apparent by the end of the first round that this was no ordinary tournament; a pair of true upsets and an 8-9 game or two were the only deviations from the chalk. The day thereafter, Minions officially lost interest when Maryland played so badly against a pretty crappy mid-major that its only hope of victory lay in decent officiating; good luck with that. And the day after that, Minions was declared legally dead when Texas, Virginia Tech, and Wisconsin all bit the big one in ridiculous displays of ineptitude.

Dignity and some other things* require that Minions stick by its unfortunate prediction that the Fuckeyes of the Official Land Grant University of the State of Ohio will win the tournament. Even if that happens and Minions is, technically, vindicated (in some tiny and mostly technical way), Minions' wife is going to kick its ass, because she also has OSU to win.

But it is not to be. Florida is smokin' hot, dood. I hate them and I'm pretty sure God does to, but what the fuck is to love about this Final Four? The successful title defense is there, waiting to happen, compounded by the football-basketball Florida-OSU thing, and the impending departure of Greasy Billy Donovan for Lexington, Kentucky--another news item sure to drive Our Friend Goth one step closer to a rope in the garage.

Hence, Minions' silence. Only now, after the dearth of anything to like in the Final Four, can I finally simmer down and write about the smoking rubble that has been the last two weeks of basketball.

Kudos to Georgetown; I hate the Hoyas so much that I was very nearly hoping that UNC would beat them. I was more hoping for a random act of terrorism by a vengeful and angry Old Testament God, but I understand the limits of reason, and I concluded that, if a gun were held to my head in demand of a preference, ACC loyalty would win out. But l'chaim** to the Hoyas; coming back from 11 down and holding the Heels scoreless for 80 percent of an overtime is Pure Comedy Gold.

Kudos to UCLA; I hate them very, very much, after a 50-point second-round drubbing of the Terrapins some years ago. But goddam are their cheerleaders hot. Those little blue shifts? The basketball jerseys and not much else? Mwah!

There are many who will call this the most boring NCAA tournament evahr. I'm with them. Matters are not helped by the Terrapin women choking on a Mississippi team (and grats to them--they've a shot at the Final Four tonight) that they absolutely firebombed just four months ago.

I'm sure that energy will overcome me at some point, and I'll manage to post something less self-indulgent. Or not. See you then.

*Mostly a desire to fuel the crazed paranoia of Our Friend Goth.
**And t'voyu mat.

Let Me Get This Straight

Shitting the bed isn't working. So we're going to take half a bottle of Ex-Lax, tie ourselves to the bed, and increase the volume? Riiiiiight.

Quagmire: Great name for a Family Guy character. Lousy concept for nation-building. Which, uhm, we don't do. Except when we do.

Note to morons: No, I didn't just equate U.S. troops to feces. Just, y'know, as a prophylactic against your most likely response to metaphor. Now shut up and go join the military, and don't pretend for a second that the left--which doesn't support the war and doesn't agree that terrorism merits a military response--is susceptible to your lame-ass attempts to turn back the chickenhawk argument. Enjoy your shit bath.

In other news, shitting the bed isn't working so well for the Terrapins, either. It is really difficult to despise the team that is your team. Unconscionably difficult, in fact. It's sad, but this team is doomed until the last player who ever met John Gilchrist skies out of College Park. This year's senior class is haunted by that ghost (and its progeny). Make like Chrissy Mac, MJ. Blow your knee again, DJ. Take your elbows to Italy, Ekene. And you, Shaggy? Just slump over, and try not to damage the floor when you hit it. Assuming you're capable of hitting the floor by simply falling down. Video evidence is inconclusive.

There are them what don't believe me, but I say this to you now: two more NCAA tournaments will occur before the Maryland Terrapins grace the Big Dance again.

And remember: the Wii is just cute as a button. Just touch it anywhere and you'll have Fun!

Vroom! Vroom!

It's A Beautiful Day For Some Hatin'

My friend Sasha doesn't hate the West Virginia University quite enough. This doesn't usually cause a problem but once a year or so, and it's not a big problem. It's more of a her problem, actually, because she's the one who has to be disturbed by the foam flecking my beard, and suchlike. But it's true. She doesn't hate them the same way she hates other things she's supposed to hate with the white-hot fury of a thousand million exploding suns, like the Dallas Cowboys and Dook basketball and Karl Rove.

I attribute WVU's long run of undefeatedness against shitty football teams almost entirely to Sasha's failure to generate sufficient passion on this issue. But no more. It was a happy night last night on ESPN, and even though it's witch-titty cold and the wind is blowing like snot and Ilse and I have to leave the house and do things, rather than bunkering down, slamming the kids with chloral hydrate, and fucking like bunnies (for the six to eight seconds I can keep up that kind of pace), a warm glow suffuses my heart, because those goddam motherfucking cocksucking dirt-stupid pansyass-schedule-playing Hillbillies got pantsed last night on national television.

So, uhm, take that, Sasha.

It is almost a glorious time in the BCS; one of the top two teams will lose, because they're playing each other in a few weeks. This will leave an opening for an undefeated subpar Big East football allegory to go undefeated and challenge conventional notions about who belongs in national championship games. Louisville and Rutgers are precisely such allegories, and they play next week. The ubiquitous Doctor Death is, of course, a Rutgers alum, and seems to think that the BCS will recognize Rutgers if it goes undefeated.

To that, Ilse and I say the same thing we said last night, when the ESPN stooges were questioning the Rutgers coach at halftime of the Hillbillies-Villebillies game:

Dood. Get a life. You're fucking Rutgers.

That harsh reality aside, I'll cheerfully pull for Rutgers in its uphill struggle, partly because two of their remaining games are against the Hillbillies and the Villebillies. And because I wholeheartedly agree that conventional notions should be challenged (unless they're perfectly sensible conventional notions like disliking Republicans and hating the West Virginia University).

Of course, either way, an undefeated crap-ass Big East team means but one thing: another fucking championship for the Fuckeyes or the Dullverines, and that? Is not a classically Martha Stewart good thing. But Go Rutgers anyway.

Itemization

Things experienced and overheard:

Terps Still Suck

In recent news, the football team needed to block a figgie in the closing seconds to beat an atrociously lame Felonhole squad last Saturday, the basketball team struggled to beat a division II team by one point last night, and the soccer team took 104 minutes to score a bloody goal on BC last night in the ACC soccer tournament. New and revised predictions: Football: 8-4; Basketball: I don't want to think about it; Soccer: death by Duke on Friday, early exit from NCAA tournament for defending champions.

Brit Hume Still Sucks

The local ubernews station talks to various media fuckbuckets once a week, and the smug liar Brit Hume is one of them. This morning, Brit pooh-poohed the notion of problems with electronic voting machines. "You'd have to be dumb as a box of hammers not to get a correct vote on one of these things," he crowed. "Millions of people use ATMs every day and there's no problem with those."

See, Brit, it's not like you have to worry about being challenged at the polls without cause, or about technologically challenged election judges, or about being assaulted by your senator's handlers when you try to ask a question. Or about any of a million other things that confront actual human beings. So shut the fuck up, you robo-lying tool of Ruppert Murdoch and the Bush Administration.

"Your Dog's Bad Breath May Be Covering Up Her Real Problem"

Also heard on my local ubernews station.

Your dog's real problem is that she's a fucking dog.

Republicans in Trouble

Yet more newsy goodness from the Media Overlords of Obviousness.

The R's will lose the House. It seems to me to be close to a lock. The Senate's more dicey; anything from 52-48 R to 52-48 D won't surprise me.

But the R's are getting increasingly desperate. It does not seem implausible that there will be some Election Day thievery; what I find interesting is that I think it's a nontrivial possibility that the R's are desperate enough to do it in a way that they get caught. That'll be fun.

And You?

You I will crush like a clam on a sea otter's belly. To be continued.

Comedy Are Funny

I've been accumulating, packratting items to throw in here when I had a moment. I haven't got a moment, but volume demands that I fart all of this out, lest I explode.

I Was Wrong

That's right, I was wrong in my fright post about the Terps at the beginning of the football season. The Terps did, in fact, beat State at Homecoming, to my delight and that of Ilse and our friends. Of course, this merely raises hopes about upcoming games against feverishly weak Felon State and the University of Overtown. I'll stick with my season-record prediction, and my plea for popular campus sites around College Park to be adorned with Ralph Friedgen's ridiculously huge cranium.

In other Terps news: Bite me, Doctor Death (rewarded at right for his return to occasional blogging with a linking we should've done long ago), for actually suggesting that we should acknowledge some other school's chick hoops. Christie Tolliver will eat your kidneys, poisoned as they are by kidney pie. For those of you unprivileged, Doctor Death is our man in London, there to scout tube stops with good call-girl ads in the phone booths. While Doctor Death is crippled by UConn, Sox, Patriots, and various other minor fandoms, and in the right light he's a dead ringer for Peyton Manning, we love his cute little expat ass to pieces anyway.

You Lie

I got push-polled by the Republican Senate campaign here in Maryland. I was slow on the uptake; after a number of more-or-less straight questions about how likely I was to vote and who I'd support, I got a slew of questions that essentially translated to this:

Ben Cardin fucks kittens in the ass before breaking their necks and sucking out the stem cells. Does that make you more or less likely to vote for him? Somewhat, or strongly?

It wasn't really any fun, though. The poller was some bimbo in California who did not understand the concepts of "push-polling" or "if Steele backer Mike Tyson raped you, would you want an abortion?"

Hush Up

Breaking news this morning: Washington Post endorses Ehrlich for re-election as Maryland governor. From the august pages of that staid, Communist, America-hating journal:

"More worrisome yet is the fact that an O'Malley victory would herald a return to the brand of one-party Democratic rule that has served the state poorly in the past."

Uhm...kinda like the one-party Republican rule at the national level, about which the Washington Post has not peeped? EVER?

I look forward to shoving this up the ass of the next fucktard who tells me that the Post is a liberal paper.

Why We Fight

Anyone who's seen any of the Michael J. Fox ads on stem cell research understands their power. This is a simple issue, one on which opponents of stem cell research are simply wrong and completely inarticulate. That they enlist drug addict pedophile and prostitution consumer Rush Limbaugh to carry an untruth-based case against the messenger is pretty much self-defeating. This one has legs. Scream it from the rooftops. I can't think of an issue that more starkly illustrates the other side's cruelty and disrespect for humans.

And Finally

Courtesy of everyone in the universe (and thus I link directly to YouTube), the first four minutes of Borat, which promises to make cruelty and disrespect for humans fun.

The Athleticism of the Turtle

I'd just like to point out that, from a results perspective, I have yet to be wrong about the Terrapins' football season. Being wrong last week would've been just orgasmic, but as we covered in the post just before this one, that was not to be. In other Terps' football news, Ralph Friedgen is still fat.

Midnight Madness was Friday night at Cole, err, Comcast. Or Maryland Madness, or whatever the hell they call it now. We invented it, you know. No, seriously. Leftuh was the first one to do it, and it just caught fahr all ovuh this gray-uht nation of our'n. Our reward for this? Leftuh's kid is a fucking assistant coach now. Can we give it back?

So the Madness was mildly entertaining, of a sort. The men's team returns a passel of self-centered a-holes and brings in some moderately interesting younguns, including an energetic and potentially dangerous shooting guard from Venezuela, a gigantic bruiser who's hurt, a lanky "slasher" (who hasn't, to my knowledge, been portrayed by Tony Perkins) who will turn out to be a great honking disappointment, and the latest Point Guard Messiah, who looks suspiciously like the last True Point Guard Messiah, known secularly as The Alien Steve Blake, except perhaps slightly less skinny. The haircut, the ears, and the hype are about the same.

This team will lose a shitload of basketball games, because they're still poisoned with negative energy left behind by that douchebag John Gilchrist, who will forever remain The Worst Recruit Evar. The point guard isn't a point guard, and blew out his ACL eating pancakes for breakfast at noon an hour ago anyway, the vaunted shooting guard is a doofus, although he has clearly taken steps to rectify his hair-centeredness, our big boy is all elbows, and our new bruiser is, seriously, named Bam-Bam Osby. But the unadulterated point is the very first bit in this paragraph:

This team will lose a shitload of basketball games.

Far more exciting is our women's team. By which I mean this:

The 2006 National Champion Maryland Terrapins

Yeah, that's right. The Defending National Champions have lost precisely nothing, and they've added a couple of transfers. Most of what they haven't lost is...uhm, okay, most of what they haven't lost, by weight, is Jade Perry. But most of what they haven't lost in playing terms is the most outstanding young person on this planet, Christie Tolliver, the point guard and Jedi Assassin. This girl is a fucking killer, a stone-cold murderer who don't take no shit off no punks from blue schools. If you are a representative of a blue school, Christie Tolliver will eat your fucking punkass kidneys while your heart's still beating and still have fresh breath and a lovely smile, without having to brush her teeth. Christie Tolliver will cut out your brain stem and still go to Heaven. Christie Tolliver's shit don't stink. I am not being the tiniest bit sarcastic, and if you think I am, Christie Tolliver will come kill you while you fucking sleep but wake you up just long enough so's you know you're daid, you Dookie bitch.

Yessir, we likes us some Christie Tolliver. In fact, we likes us the whole Maryland womens' team, way the fuck more than we likes our mens' team. Come to think of it, we don't like our mens' team very much at all, although that's a condition that can easily be cured with three or four well-placed victories over blue schools.

We have yet another team of Defending National Champions, that being our mens' soccer team. Sadly, they just got punked by Jesuits, at home. Stay tuned--the ACC tournament is yet to come--but I suggest that homies of a certain northeastern institution that doesn't belong in our athletic conference protect their kidneys real good for a while.