Of all the ways I've ever found out I didn't get a job, the most interesting yet was going to a cocktail party where a firm was looking to recruit 1Ls and (more importantly) get us interested in applying there for our post-2L summer, and having them say that while they had filled the positions at one office that takes 1Ls, the other three are still open. Then they listed the 3, and the one I applied to wasn't on the list. D'oh!!

So neither firm I interviewed with worked out, and now I'll be looking primarily at public interst work for the summer. If you see me this summer and I'm dressed like an old cartoon hobo with the little bag on the end of a stick, now you know why. I still have a few outside prospects for paid summer work, but by far my two best shots have passed me by.

So (via Fark) GQ reminds us why, let us count the ways, the Grammys suck. They didn't even mention the pluralizing with ys instead of ies thing. But it reminded me also of the generally ridiculous "Song of the Year" vs. "Record of the Year" distinction. Which in turn forced me to reconsider something I posted here recently. I've decided that "Mr. Brightside" is actually my Record of the Year, since it allows me to make a more appropriate choice for Song of the Year. My actual Song of the Year would be Such Great Heights. Why didn't I just make it Record of the Year, you may ask? Well, the reason is that two very different and both awesome in their own way versions came to light in 2004--the heart-rending acoustic Garden State soundtrack Iron and Wine version, and the nifty Postal Service electronica version. Some research would yield which version is the original and which is the cover (or that both are covers, and the original is some third version yet), but since I enjoy them both pretty equally I'm just not that concerned. Not that I would object to a comment from someone with knowledge...

One of the strange things about having lived in L.A. is that every once in a while you're minding your own business, sitting in the TV lounge early on a Sunday morning waiting for clothes to dry, watching NFL Matchup and gearing up for Championship Sunday, and all of a sudden an IBM commercial comes on. Your attention is drawn not because of a sudden need for business machines, but because the guy on the left is the Indian guy whose crazy family you lived with for a year. Coupled with hearing recently that he plays "Pakistani" in Million Dollar Baby, it seems as though Naveen's career is finally starting to take off. Let's hope he doesn't forget us little people.

Answers to Joe's random quiz #2. I'm not surprised no one got it, but "Concrete and Clay" is a personal favorite, probably the catchiest British invasion tune in my mind. The Pulp track is a nice little song on a consistently excellent album, but in that context doesn't especially stand out. I'm not surprised at the higher conversion rate this time, as I suspected this bunch had fewer obscure tracks. I'm probably good for one more version before exhausting the unique artists on my playlist.

1. "Learn to ball a jack, learn to lay a track, learn to pick and shovel too."--Johnny Cash, The Legend of John Henry
2. "We got a lotta little teenage, blue-eyed groupies who'll do anything we say, we got a gen-you-ine Indian guru that's teachin' us a better way."--Dr. Hook, The Cover of Rolling Stone
3. "Maybe she would like some food, asked my to untie her, a chase would be nice for a few."--Nirvana, Polly
4. "I can't choose it's too much to lose, my love's too strong; Wow! maybe if she would come back to me I can't be wrong."--Los Straitjackets (originally Los Bravos), Black Is Black
5. "Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slits, you need a guardian."--Weezer, Buddy Holly
6. "They showed me where it was for the moment I didn’t know I was in for such an event. So I came to her room and opened the door--Oh, snap! guess what I saw? "--Biz Markie, Just A Friend
7. "His big hands were calloused, he looked like a mountain, for a minute I thought I was dead."--Kenny Rogers, Lucille
8. "I raised her head and then she smiled and said, 'Hold me darlin' for a little while.'"--J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, Last Kiss
9. "Other people like us, we gotta work, and there’s even some evil mothers, they’ll tell you that life is just made out of dirt"--Lou Reed, Sweet Jane
10. "Boys lie too much, girls act too tough, enough is enough."--The Strokes, Take It Or Leave It
11. "It’s four o’clock in the morning, damn it, listen to me good. I’m sleeping with myself tonight"--Elton John, Someone Saved My Life Tonight
12. "Big screen, kissing in a movie. God, you moved me around. We got seriously down."--Old 97's, Nineteen
13. "And I swore, I swore I would be true, and honey so did you. So why were you holding her hand?"--The Cranberries, Linger
14. "I could stand to prove, if we can get around it, I know that it’s true"--Foo Fighters, Big Me
15. "Poor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be king, and a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything."--Bruce Springsteen, Badlands
16. "Well, Shakespeare, he's in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells, speaking to some French girl who says she knows me well."--Bob Dylan, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
17. "Well they dug for their coal 'til the land was foresaken, and wrote it all down as the progress of man."--John Prine, Paradise
18. "And as I still walk on I think of the things we done together, while our hearts were young."--Del Shannon, Runaway
19. "I wrote this song two hours before we met, I didn't know your name or what you looked like yet."--Pulp, Something Changed
20. "If there's one thing that makes me sick it's when someone hides behind politics."--Ramones, Bonzo Goes To Bitburg
21. "I said somebody's got to take care of him, so I quit school and that's what I did."--Tracy Chapman, Fast Car
22. "You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do and it's breakin' my heart in two, cause I never wanna see you a sad, girl."--Cat Stevens, Wild World
23. "So I'll sing you a new song, please don't cry anymore and then I'll ask your forgiveness, though I don't know just what I'm asking it for."--Thompson Twins, Hold Me Now
24. "All around I see the purple shades of evening, and on the ground the shadows fall and once again you're in my arms so tenderly."--Unit 4+2, Concrete and Clay
25. "He's such a hairy behemoth she said, and dumb as a box of hammers, but he's such a handsome guy"--Jill Sobule, I Kissed A Girl

There's gotta be a little rain, sometimes.

Of course by now you’ve seen the Oscar nominations, and like me you wish you could travel back to early 2004 and put a big fat proposition bet on “Jamie Foxx will receive two acting nominations for movies released this calendar year.”

More interesting to me is the reminder list, something Tim and Dana turned me on to a few years back when we were going to tons of movies. It includes every movie that was eligible for Best Picture in a given year, and is a really good way to see how many movies released in that calendar year you’ve seen. From a high of 60 in 2000, I am down to a lousy 22. For the morbidly curious:

Along Came Polly
Anchorman
Bourne Supremacy
Closer
Collateral
Day After Tomorrow
Dodgeball
Dreamers, The
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fahrenheit 9/11
Garden State
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
In Good Company
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Kinsey
Ladykillers
Manchurian Candidate
Meet the Fokkers
Ocean’s 12
Saved!
Sideways
Team America: World Police
Village, The

In law school you learn that our federal courts deal with the important questions of the day, such as ass vs. azz.

They're not kidding.

Snapshots of victory and defeat

1984-85. The Steelers went into Miami for the AFC Championship Game. Even at 9, I think I had a pretty good idea that the 48-TD Marino juggernaut was too much for us, but I went in at least a little hopeful. This one did not sting so much, except that the Dolphins went on to face the 49ers in the Super Bowl; the 49ers only lost once that year, and it was to the black and gold. Also notable, the debut of the Ghostbusters Steeler song: "What ya gonna yell? Go Steelers!" and "I ain't afraid of no dolphin; I ain't afraid of no fish." I still remember a KDKA news segment devoted to how the song was incorrect; dolphins ain't fish.

1989, the wildcard. The Steelers needed a win, three other losses, a solar eclipse, and a gypsy curse on the final weekend of the season to get into the playoffs, but somehow it happened. The we go into the Astrodome and knock off a heavily-favored Oiler team in OT. The next week looked like an Elway buzzsaw, but Merril Hoge went crazy and Bubby Brister was better than solid in a game that went down to the wire, 24-23. This was the last gasp (or maybe hacking cough) of the Chuck Noll era.

1990, Carmelo. I went to game 4 of the NLCS, which was the only game of the whole series lost by the home team, and is the only major league playoff game to date that I've ever been to. But my enduring memory of the series is the hope against hope that the Bucs could go into Cincy, get hot, and pull it out. Never happened--but in the 9th inning of game 6, Carmelo Martinez hit a home run ball that Glenn Braggs went ridiculously high in the air to snag. If that ball clears the glove, the Pirates would've had 3 runs on 2 hits for the game; as it was, it was just the penultimate out in a monster one-hitter by the Reds staff.

October 1992, My childhood/adolescence/innocence ended when Sid slid. At that moment I first knew the pain of knowing that something I loved was unequivocally over, with no possibility of return, that falling short was an inevitable part of life, and that something that seemed great could fall flat with a resounding thud. I was 17 and 8 months, a freshman in college, and this result was a symbolic orientation into the existential condition. Maybe if the Pirates had won or even made it to a World Series, I never would have developed an affinity for postmodernism, ennui, and cranky books. Sigh. Oh BTW, it was also the Pirates' last taste of a .500 season. Let's move on--this wound is still open.

1991-93: Victory! The early '90s was also the time of Pittsburgh's most recent full-on success story, the back-to-back Stanley Cup Penguins. Lesson learned: take a singular talent, then slowly surround him with incredible if somewhat lesser talent, and good things will happen. Lesson #2: the best team in a run isn't necessarily the most successful. The best of those teams was probably the third year when they broke the all-time winning streak and ran away with the points title, but were upset in an epic OT struggle with the Islanders. I'm not old enough to remember, but I've heard the same said about the '70s Steelers--that the best team may have been the 1976 crew that lost to the Raiders in the playoffs when Franco and Rocky Bleier were both out with injuries. Yes, this lesson may be aimed at you, Pats fans.

1994-95: AFC Championship Game #2. This is one of the two most painful Steeler losses of all-time for me, largely because (like everyone) I just didn't see it coming. Stan Freakin' Humphries? Alfred Pupunu running down the sidelines farther than he'd ever run before in his life!? This game isn't epochal for me in the way that the '92 NLCS was, but it was pretty damn painful--it's no coincidence that XXIX is the only Super Bowl since XVI that I haven't watched in its entirety or something pretty close to it.

1995-96: AFC Championship Game #3 (aka the huge freakin' sigh of relief): This wasn't supposed to be a game, but boy was it. Willie Williams making a saving tackle on Lamont Jordan Warren [had it right in my head], Ernie Mills knocking a sure interception for a TD away from Quentin Coryattt, a touchdown pass to Slash, a clinching drive punctuated by a long deep pass to Ernie Mills (a pass the Steelers never completed before that season), and then the last second heave into the end zone by Jim Harbaugh that had trouble written all over it, until Randy Fuller knocked it off of Aaron Bailey's stomch. No, I didn't have to look any of this one up--some games stick with you, and when your eyeballs are bulging out in disbelief, it's probably all the more likely.

1996: Super Bowl XXX: I have been drunker, but I've never consumed more alcohol in a day than I did that day. This was the first Super Bowl in five years where the AFC hung with the NFC, and Levon Kirkland had a monster game. Memorable images: Rod Woodson pointing to his fast-recovering knee, Michael Irvin actually getting called for pass interference, Deon Figures recovering an awesome surprise on-side kick, and of course the two Larry Brown picks. I'm in the minority Steeler camp that says we win this game if Ernie Mills doesn't blow out his knee early in the game. Both ugly picks came with Corey Holliday, who never ever ever played, on the field in the 5-wides set, and if O'Donnell had his full complement of trustworthy receivers, I still think he finds a way to get it done. Still, this sucked, but was not quite so bad as other losses to inferior teams.

1997-98: AFC Championship Game #4: The big Steeler fight song this time around, to the tune of Tubthumping, was "Elway's knocked down, he won't get up again, and now the Steelers are Super-bound." This was inspired by Bubby Brister (Elway's backup)'s comment that Three Rivers was a tough place to play, because the wind blows in off the lake. ("Wind blows in from the lake" replaced "Pissin' the night away".) All I can say about that is this: if your hope of winning a playoff game at home is predicated on knocking out the other team's starting QB, then you already know you're in trouble. On a personal level, this was my last game before becoming a Steeler fan in exile, so while it wasn't the most surprising result or the biggest shocker, it did put a stamp of finality on an era of my Steeler fandom.

1998: Thanksgiving: The Steelers had played like shit all year and yet were somehow 7-4 and well positioned going into the Detroit Thanskgiving game. Meanwhile, I was broke, not yet having much luck making friends in LA (that changed, luckily), and generally not happy, except for my weekly Steeler bar respite. Ten people showed up at Gabe's that morning for a 9:30 PST kickoff, and a lousy Thanksgiving dinner at halftime. I mean, take a dive bar that's generally bad at food, and then imagine them cooking for the holidays. This was worse. Then the Bettis coin flip happens, the Steelers lose the game, and they go into the tank for the rest of the season plus the next two seasons. In short, this was probably the single worst day of my life--my first Thansgiving away from home, poor, depressed, 400 pounds, and then this game came along. Bad, bad times.

2001: AFC Championship Game #5: After three years of sucky Steeler ex-patriatism, this was the glory year. 13-3, could've been 15-1, and looking like world-beaters. Absolutely emasculated the defending champs in the Divisional game, the day after cheering wildly at the Snow Bowl both because it was the game of the century to date but also because we all wanted to face Tom Brady and the no-name Patriots rather than Rich Gannon, Jerry Rice, Tim Brown, and company. Oops. This is co-#1, along with the Chargers loss, on my all-time painful didnt'-see-it-coming Steeler losses. The game seemed to take forever--even with the 3.5 hours allotted on championship Sunday, we were halfway through the second quarter of the Rams-Eagles game by the time this one ended. The running game had nothing, the defense played well, but special teams blew it big-time. This one unfolded like one of those nightmare scenarios where you think nothing bad can happen unless absolutely everything goes wrong, and then for four hours you watch absolutely everything go wrong. Just disastrous. Also, as it turned out, my last game in grad school, as I moved back home 5 months later. In retrospect, this may have been the beginning of the spiral that was the worst year and a half of my life.

2005: I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but from the above it should be clear that I will remember it in great detail and will see it as a moment drenched with meaning 10 or 20 years from now. This isn't 1994 or 2001, where I don't see any possible scenario where we lose. Also, it looks like with Big Ben, we are going to be up there for years to come. But I also know you can't sqaunder opportunities. For parallels, I remember the 1998-99 NFC Championship Game (sorry, Joe), which was the only previous meeting of 15-1 and 14-2 teams. Along with the Snow Bowl, it may have been the greatest football game I've ever seen. I hope there's a third game on that list after tomorrow, and I hope I remember it happily in the future. If I do find larger symbolism for this one, perhaps it comes from the fact that I'll turn 30 five days after Super Bowl XXXIX, and that I finally feel like my life is on track in most every way, and getting there in the other ways. Maybe this is the time where I will get one to teach me how to deal with success, rather than how to deal with pain, underachieving, and loss.

And maybe it's just a football game--but football games are symbolic versions of the narratives we tell about success and failure, winning and losing, doing things right, doing things wrong, cutting corners and having it bite you in the ass, hubris, selflessness, teamwork, sacrifice, smart preparation, and a host of other values. If you're in Ann Arbor tomorrow at 6:30, come to Buffalo Wild Wings--I'll be the one with the Terrible Towel, drinking and screaming his head off at the actions of grown men I'll never meet, and never once apologizing for why I do it.

Here we go again with round two. No artists are repeated internally, and unless I screwed up, no artists are repeated from batch one. I think this set skews slightly older, for no good reason.

1. "Learn to ball a jack, learn to lay a track, learn to pick and shovel too."
2. "We got a lotta little teenage, blue-eyed groupies who'll do anything we say, we got a gen-you-ine Indian guru that's teachin' us a better way."
3. "Maybe she would like some food, asked my to untie her, a chase would be nice for a few."
4. "I can't choose it's too much to lose, my love's too strong; Wow! maybe if she would come back to me I can't be wrong."
5. "Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slits, you need a guardian."
6. "They showed me where it was for the moment I didn’t know I was in for such an event. So I came to her room and opened the door--Oh, snap! guess what I saw? "
7. "His big hands were calloused, he looked like a mountain, for a minute I thought I was dead."
8. "I raised her head and then she smiled and said, 'Hold me darlin' for a little while.'"
9. "Other people like us, we gotta work, and there’s even some evil mothers, they’ll tell you that life is just made out of dirt."
10. "Boys lie too much, girls act too tough, enough is enough."
11. "It’s four o’clock in the morning, damn it, listen to me good. I’m sleeping with myself tonight."
12. "Big screen, kissing in a movie. God, you moved me around. We got seriously down."
13. "And I swore, I swore I would be true, and honey so did you. So why were you holding her hand?"
14. "I could stand to prove, if we can get around it, I know that it’s true."
15. "Poor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be king, and a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything."
16. "Well, Shakespeare, he's in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells, speaking to some French girl who says she knows me well."
17. "Well they dug for their coal 'til the land was foresaken, and wrote it all down as the progress of man."
18. "And as I still walk on I think of the things we done together, while our hearts were young."
19. "I wrote this song two hours before we met, I didn't know your name or what you looked like yet."
20. "If there's one thing that makes me sick it's when someone hides behind politics."
21. "I said somebody's got to take care of him, so I quit school and that's what I did."
22. "You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do and it's breakin' my heart in two, cause I never wanna see you a sad, girl."
23. "So I'll sing you a new song, please don't cry anymore and then I'll ask your forgiveness, though I don't know just what I'm asking it for."
24. "All around I see the purple shades of evening, and on the ground the shadows fall and once again you're in my arms so tenderly."
25. "He's such a hairy behemoth she said, and dumb as a box of hammers, but he's such a handsome guy."

Answers to lyrics quiz #1:

1. Violent Femmes, Waiting For The Bus
2. The Hives, Supply and Demand
3. They Might Be Giants, Snail Shell
4. Stereolab, Crest
5. Cher, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves
6. [Glasgow's own] Franz Ferdinand, This Fire
7. Ken Nordine, Mauve
8. The Tremeloes, Here Comes My Baby
9. Mephaskapheles, Bumble Bee Tuna
10. The Breeders, Drivin' on 9
11. Coldplay, Spies
12. Harvey Danger, Carlotta Valdez
13. Steve Martin, King Tut & The Toots Uncommons
14. Better Than Ezra, Good
15. The Beatles, Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
16. Bowling For Soup, Girl All The Bad Guys Want
17. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Hot Burrito #1
18. Blink-182, Aliens Exist
19. Liz Phair, Flower
20. Warrant, Heaven Isn't Too Far Away
21. Dead Or Alive, Brand New Lover
22. America, Ventura Highway
23. The Replacements, Alex Chilton
24. Uncle Tupelo, The Long Cut
25. Nada Surf, Popular

The next incarnation will be coming soon, within 2 to 48 hours, depending on how classes go today.

So it turns out that not only is "Mr. Brightside" my song of the year for 2004, it's also got a one of my favorite videos in a long time. One of the strange things about Yahoo's Launch, which I've gotten a lot of good use out of this past year, is that you can't get it to play a particular song at a particular moment, you can play a particular video. It's useful if you want to hear that song--even if you minimize the window.

As for Saturday, the less said the better except this--like March Madness, it's all about survive and advance, and you don't get any style points for how you make the next round. All you can ask is to have a chance, at home, to make the Super Bowl, and that's what we've got.

Finally, the quiz-bowl experience this weekend was a positive one. I've long past the point where I want to do qb very much or very often, but I was glad to see I can still have fun with it and can still perform. I played in the pop culture tourney on Sunday and finished 5th in scoring. To be fair, some much better players finished behind me because they played on better teams and cancelled each other out; that said, my team was none too shabby, even if we faded in the playoffs. I only read and scorekept for the academic tourney on Saturday, but I still knew more than I thought I would, just knowing where I would have gotten some questions that took longer in my room.

As I sit here wheezing from the first two full-court basketball games I've played in many a moon (I held my own in the first, with two buckets and some decent screens, but was useless for the second.), I decided it's time for some hints on the lyrics thing, which will certainly be followed up because it's fun, probably Monday or Tuesday.

2. Album cut off a 2004 alterna-rocker.
4. 1993 album, British, genre maybe industrial, I don't know much about them; this is a 6-minute song, and this lyric, the only lyric, is repeated many many times
6. See #2.
8. I'm looking for the original, British Invasion artist
10. See #2, except substitute 1994 for 2004, and it's a girl group
11. Again, album cut off off contemporary alterna-rock.
20. OK, this is anal--title is "Heaven Isn't Too Far Away"
21. Biggish new wave/synth-pop '80s song; this is the one I'm most surprised hasn't been gotten yet.
22. Oldies/classic rock station fare; not exactly a staple--maybe the band's 3rd biggest song--but fairly well known
24. I can't believe Victoria was here and this one is still standing; alt-country

Please don't yell at me if, for instance, I call something a 2004 album and it really came out in November 2003; hints are not binding contracts.

Every time the NFL playoffs come around and the Steelers are prominently involved, a new crop of fan-made fight songs are recorded. This year, of course, is no different. On the question of enthusiasm, they get a 10. On the question of quality, they get a 10 for enthusiasm. The most popular one for years has been the "Here We Go" song, the main theme of which can be expressed by the chorus:

Here we go
Here we go
Here we go, Steelers, here we go
Pittsburgh's goin' to the Super Bowl

The lyrics can't quite do justice, however, to the pure tone-deafness of the tune. (But don't take my word for it--here is the downloadable 2004 version.) Note that I say this as someone who has listened to it approximately 36 times in the last 36 hours. You probably shouldn't listen, though, if non-musical attempts at music--or, alternately, extreme versions of the unique Pittsburgh accent--cause you physical pain.

One other thing I like about this tune, which is updated each time the team makes the playoffs for current players, is that it has a contingency plan, as shown in this verse:

Now the offense is ready to score
And there's one thing we know for sure
If we don't get it in the end zone
We'll get three points off of Jeff Reed's toe

You gotta love a fight song whose central sentiment is: even if we don't do the best thing we can do, we'll do something reasonably good.

Last semester, for about the first half, I consistently made it to the gym Monday through Wednesday. Not once did I ever make it to the gym during a week if I didn't go on Monday. From mid-semester on, I made it rarely--I think about 5 times between November and December. I wouldn't say I exactly made a New Year's resolution to go more this term/year, but it is a goal.

So far so good, I guess. I've been there the last four days, which means that "sore" isn't so much a sensation as a way of being at the moment. However, it basically feels good. My stamina numbers suck, but they'll recover quickly enough. My biggest concern is scheduling; last term classes started at 11:15, so any day I went I went first thing in the morning. With 8 and 10 o'clocks this time around, that's not going to work. Three days a week this term I'm done at 2:30 (MTF) and have the afternoon. The other two days I add in a 3:40, which screws things up a bit. However, I might be dropping the Th 3:40 for an MW 6-7:30, which would open a fourth afternoon, but screw up the "gym afternoon/homework evening" plan.

But anyway, the bottom line is, I need to make sure classes don't overwhelm my motivation to exercise, and I need to make sure that screwing up one day doesn't mean I write off a whole week. If I can do those things, it should be a good term on the workout front. In the meantime, I should go soak in Ben Gay...

UPDATE: Italics indicates a correct guess in the comments section (the first six nine 11 comments, as of the time of the update); bold italics indicates a near miss.

Following in the shoes of Craig and Maribeth, these lyrics are from random songs that popped up in Windows Media Player from among the music I have on my computer. I eliminated any repeats by the same artist and, for obvious reasons, instrumentals. Sorry, Classical Gas. Answer key to be posted at some point; guesses to be entered into comments by y'all in the meantime. Any mistake in the lyrics is my fault, and/or the fault of the lyrics page Google pointed me to.

1. "Say hey Mr. Driver-man, don't be slow, cause I've got somewhere I've gotta go."
   
2. "Shiny hair that's my life ambition but I'll devote my time to a new omission the rizzle-razzle kitsch of paranoid city."
   
3. "And how can you ever be repaid? How may I give you a hand from the position at your feet where I stand?"
   
4. "If there's been a way to build it, There'll be a way to destroy it, Things are not all that out of control."
   
5. "I was 16 he was 21, rode with us to Memphis, Papa would've shot him if he knew what he'd done."
   
6. "Eyes, boring a way through me, paralyse, controlling completely now."
   
7. "As graceful as glide, it's true, known far and wide."
   
8. "Walking with a love with a love that's oh so fine, never to be mine, no matter how I try."
   
9. "Him had a cravin' for somethin' of the sea. I told him I had chicken franks, I told him I had Charlie. Him smiled and said..."
   
10. "I sure look pretty, Carson City, walking down the aisle."
    
11. "We're all fugitives--look at the way we live; down here, I cannot sleep from fear, no I said which way do I turn?"
    
12. "Kiss Kim Novak where the redwoods grow, I'll bleach her hair and pretend she didn't die."
    
13. "He ate a crocodile. He gave his life for tourism."
    
14. "Well, maybe I'll call or I'll write you a letter, now maybe we'll see on the Fourth of July. But I'm not too sure, and I'm not too proud."
    
15. "She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere, so I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair."
    
16. "There she goes again with fishnets on, and dreadlocks in her hair. She broke my heart, I wanna be sedated--all I wanted was to see her naked!"
    
17. "He may feel all your charms. He might hold you in his arms, but I’m the one who let you in."
    
18. "Dark and scary, ordinary, explanation, information, nice to know ya, paranoia, where's my mother, biofather."
    
19. "You act like you're fourteen years old, everything you say is so obnoxious, funny, true and mean, I want to be your blowjob queen."
    
20. "How I love the way you move and the sparkle in your eyes, there's a color deep inside me like a blue surburban sky."
    
21. "My other loves will tell you that I'm nothing but a pleasure seeker and for once I really must agree."
    
22. "Some people say this town don’t look good in snow. You don’t care, I know."
    
23. "Cerebral rape and pillage in a village of his choice. Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice."
    
24. "I've been searching and you've been gone, out looking for the shortest path to the one that you're on. And I've already seen all I wanna see."
    
25. "Make sure to keep your hair spotless and clean. Wash it at least every two weeks--once every two weeks."
    

While I was home I watched a fair amount of ESPN talking head shows and listened to a fair amount of sports talk radio. I generally enjoy both of these things, except that there's one part that I just can't stand--all too often, "sports talk" turns into "moral outrage talk" in discussing the travails of various athletes. Perhaps this bugs me in part because I'm not easily morally outraged, and certainly not by things like end zone celebrations. And perhaps it bugs me because I'm tuning in for actual discussion about sports but instead I'm getting soapbox crap. But also, I think it bugs me because the whole phenomenon is both conformist and levelling,

The best and worst thing about team sports is the same thing that is the best and worst thing about militaries--their subsuming of the individual into a collective for mutual advantage. The good is that you can accomplish more together than individually. The bad, though, is that the conformity required tends to spill over into areas well beyond the collective goals. For instance, what happens in the end zone after a score really has nothing to do with accomplishing team goals.

Much more of concern to me, though, is the levelling aspect of the "moral outrage" school of sports broadcasting. Jayson Williams shot and killed a guy. Joe Horn celebrated a touchdown in an unusual way. Randy Moss left the field when a game was mathematically out of reach (recovering an onsides kick takes more than the 2 seconds the Vikes had, and a recovered onside kick cannot be advanced) but not actually over. To the outraged, however, each of these incidents becomes a single tally on a scoreboard where one tally creates an "out of control" ahtlete or one with "a past" or "off-the-field issues", and multiple tallies creates a "cancer in the locker room". The number of tallies, it seems to me, far outweighs any judgment of their relative severity in determining whether or not an athlete is a "troublemaker". The problem is multiplied when one is reminded that transgressions are not necessarily illegal or immoral conduct or bad play, but also include behavior that breaks no rule except unspoken, barely understood limits of acceptable on-field conduct.

Sports are supposed to be about meritocracy and rewarding performance. Randy Moss scored two touchdowns while playing through injury (something we supposedly also value), while Brett Favre threw four picks and made one of the most boneheaded, underhand, 5 yards over the line throws anyone's ever seen. Who's getting killed in the press today? Moss, for how he celebrated his second touchdown. It's ricoculous.

All that said, I'm as tired as anyone of seeing celebrations after every tackle for a one-yard loss. But I'm not about to turn it into an indictment of our whole culture...

Cleaning up some of the miscellany that I haven't had the chance to discuss...

• I got back to Beallsville from New Hampshire at 1:50 a.m. on January 3rd. Unfortunately, my connection was in Philadelphia on U.S. Airways. This means that my luggage arrived exactly 25 hours later. Yes, that's correct--a very unhappy looking delivery man handed me a large black suitcase at my folks' front door at 2:50 in the morning. FYI, you might want to keep your
  supply of thyroid medication in your carry-on, just so you know.
  
• DEK's Friday entry provides most of the details of our trip to the ABA game. If I remember any more key details, they'll show up in the comments there.
  
• I had two interviews on Thursday for summer jobs. It's hard to say how they went; I felt good, and at no point did I start screaming, "I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS, DAMMIT!" But I've given up on reading the minds of interviewers. I had four half-hour sessions with each firm, plus two other guys from the first firm took me to lunch. By the last conversation, I was ready to fall asleep right there in the lawyer's office. Fortunately, I held up, but it was touch and go. Interviewing is draining.
  
• I spent my last day at home watching NFL Films on ESPN Classic--very good times. I even got to see the one with the Magic Bean, and something called "Super Seventies," which was an hour-long summary of the decade in football, and which featured titles in the Skip-Bo font.
  
• I made it back to Ann Arbor yesterday afternoon; I have already figured out at least three things I left at home. Go Joe.
  
• After 3 weeks away, the four flights of stairs just suck out loud.

Some random, actual exchanges and comments from Dwight enjoying and Joe THOROUGHLY enjoying the Orange Bowl:

D: It looks like Jason White might be having a Gino Torretta game.
J: Yes.
D: Is he going to have the same draft interest as Eric Crouch?
J: No, White's not garnering any interest as a safety.
D: Is he going to have the same draft interest as Tommy Frazier?
J: No, he's not getting interest from the CFL.
D: Charlie Ward?
J: No, he's not getting any interest from the NBA.
D: OK, I was trying to stick to football.
J: I think we're back to Torretta. On draft day he's going to be swearing--he's gonna have Torretta's Syndrome

(Announcers discuss White's struggles in last year's Sugar Bowl vs. LSU)
J: We may be looking at the rare double Torretta.
D: I think you can get one of those at Starbucks. In fact, White may be serving them there next week.

D: Wouldn't it be great if the ADT Trophy got stolen?

D: You know, if you translate it, "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" means: "The The Angels Angels of Anaheim"
J: I guess their owner was a fan of Double Double Chex Chex

Brad Nessler: 25 men fight over one woman on...The Bachelorette. Sounds like college.
D: Brad Nessler went to Deep Springs?

I learned a while back that I am capable of two kinds of New Years Eves: trying to party and having it go horribly awry, or having a quiet evening that makes me feel somewhat like a loser but without downright sucking. This year we ended up doing something in between; Tim's mom was going to a party in White River Junction, Vermont, and we were invited. As an extra surprise, Kristan flew up that afternoon too. The party was seriously on the geriatric side, except for one UVM nursing student who stayed very close to her parents all night.

The upsides were quality food and booze, an interesting game of Apples to Apples (which should be mandatory for gatherings of 10 or more that involve party games), and the Kibbutzing Nazi. The Kibbutzing Nazi was the hostess, this 60-something woman in a jogging suit who seemed to have taken more bennies than a 1970s linebacker. "Hyper" does not begin to tell her story. She was way, WAY into this game called Sequence, which is apparently a New Year's tradition at her house. The thing is, she didn't actually play--she merely ran around exhorting everyone else to play (at their peril, I assume, though no one tested her), and strictly enforcing her "no kibbutzing" rule at the penalty of losing a card for each member of your team. Now, my family plays board games and at times takes them semi-seriously, but when it crosses the line into enforcing military discipline at the expense of conversation, the board game is probably a bad idea.

At the end of the night, the Kibbutzing Nazi told The Story--Tim, Kristan and I will long remember The Story. Here's The Story in a nutshell--the KN, her husband, and Ken (Tim's mom's boyfriend) were skiing, and Ken put his pole into some loose powder and fell into a snowbank from which it took 20 minutes to extricate him. When the situation was under control, Mr. KN skiied away, leaving KN and Ken. KN then asked Ken what he did, and he said, "Well, I went like this" accompanied with putting his pole into the snowbank, and he promptly fell right back in and it took 20 more minutes to get him out a second time.

On its own kind of a funny story, but the humor was in the telling. The KN made Ken tell the story, and then halfway through she took it over, culminating with the line, "And he went like this (gesture), and fell over again." The thing was, over the next 5 minutes, she repeated the punch line at least (no exaggeration) a dozen times. The laughter was increasingly awkward and then uproarious again once we stopped laughing at the line and started laughing at the ridiculousness of the KN. All the way back to Tim's--a 2-hour drive across New Hampshire at 1:30 in the morning--it would be quiet for a while, and then someone would say "And he went like this," and we would all crack up again for another 5 minutes.

I'm really sorry if this didn't translate into text; trust me, it was freakin' hysterical in person.