Here's the short version of my last four days: basketball, basketball, alcohol, food, basketball, basketball, morning drinking (St. Patrick's Day), basketball, basketball, this post. OK, actually that's the medium-length version.

This post plus its comments pretty much sums up the downside. I will say that the group I was with actually liked the Sonic commercials, but otherwise pretty much agree. One special highlight was when someone figured out that "Alan" in the Midas commercial with Fred Flintstone is the same actor as the Sonic tot-smacker. Also, the Southwest commercials didn't really seem to fit the "Wanna get away" motif, particularly the exploding ball one. I also had a hard time convincing people that How I Met Your Mother is actually a good show based on the ads.

Finally, yes, very bitter, let us never speak of it again.

Since several people have asked, no, I haven't found a sublet for summer yet. After the previously documented debacle, I decided to stop looking for a while because it was just making me mad and piling on stress that I don't need. I'll start looking again after this weekend.

Speaking of which, one of the reasons I haven't posted anything lately is that it's that time of year again, when I'm refreshing espn.com and Deadspin approximately every 38 seconds looking for information about "sleepers," "Cinderellas," and "chalk." It's appropriate to warn you that I've picked my most vanilla bracket ever this year, so expect chaos. Final Four is UCLA, UConn, Villanova, and Iowa, with UConn over UCLA in the championship game. As usual, all I'll be rooting for by Friday night is that all the #1 seeds get knocked off ASAP. And, of course, Pitt, now that those Kent bastards don't seem to have any future Pro Bowlers on the roster this time. Other than Pitt, I can't see any major conference teams that I'm really rooting for, so I hope the mid-majors can mix things up a bit.

BTW, if you're a commentator on a major sports website, and you're asked to predict an upset and you pick a 10/7 game, you should just be stopped. In my mind, upset = 12 seed or lower in the first round, and "Cinderella" means a 5 or above in the Elite Eight, an 8 or above in the Sweet Sixteen, or a 13 or above winning a game. Anything less is simply business as usual.

I think I speak for all Steeler fans everywhere when I say that I sincerely hope that this works out better for the national defense than it did for the local defense.

I've had a strange week where a lot of little things have gone badly--none of them bad enough to really bitch about individually, but collectively a pain in the ass. That probably led to the heavy heavy drinking of Thursday night, and the sitting around and doing nothing but watching basketball, which arrived 6 days early yesterday.

The exciting thing Thursday night was that for the third time recently I had the strong perception with an actual evidentiary leg to stand on that a total stranger was interested in me. The really exciting thing was that this time it wasn't a dude. The less exciting thing is that I was too much of a moron drunk to do anything about it. But still, good sign. And it's giving me just enough of a swelled head that I've taken to wearing short sleeves even though it's been too cold for them the last couple of days, in an effort to show off what I am almost approaching the point of thinking about unironically as "the guns." OK, ironically still, but still with more justification than I've ever had before.

If you haven't done so already, I implore you to watch the end of Flavor of Love on VH1. Here's the schedule. All you really need to catch is the Episode 9 recap show, but do yourself a favor and watch the pivotal Episode 8. One of the final three (OK, I'll go ahead and say it--final two) contestants is "New York" (everyone's got a stupid pseudonym), and she is one of the great reality TV characters ever, for the simple reason that she is absolutely 100% bat-shit crazy. I swear to god the producers must've told Flav to keep her around because she's so nuts. OTOH her mother is absolutely no-nonsense, and the interaction between the two in Episode 8 is off the charts. It's basically New York saying things like "But I love him," and "We're totally soulmates," and Mama New York saying things like, "Does he dress like that all the time?", "I forbid you to love him," and "He hasn't actually touched you has he?" Priceless.

New York might not have made it through Episode 8, but "Pum'kin"'s mother blew her daughter's cover. Apparently in an earlier episode some girls had been sitting around talking about all the reality and dating shows they had been on, or had tried to be on, and Flav was bugged by this because it shows the girls are more about TV than they are about gettin' their Flav on. Pum'kin had participated in the "out"ing of those girls. Flashforward to Pum'kin's mom telling Flav, "This isn't the first time she's done something like this."

This led to my single favorite reality TV personal interview quote of all time, as Pum'kin presented her side of the story:

It's not like I'm trying to get on TV. I've only been on four game shows, Blind Date, some talk show and then this.

Folks, if that doesn't pique your interest, I don't know what else I can say.

P.S.: I'm super-excited that I finally made it through a post this week without saying fuck. Oh wait. Shit!

The other fucking shoe:

Joe -
Hey I am really sorry, I have some bad news. My roommate had a place to move into May 15th ish (as I told you), and now she is saying she cannot get the place for her and her dog until the end of July. I hate going back on my word - But I really do not want to give this girl the boot. She is a friend. At the same time I did tell you, you could live here as long as you pay the $ 100. However, I do not believe any harm will be done seeing as how, we just talked about this Saturday and we memorialized everything several hours ago. I am so sorry. I am, at the same time, a man of my word and if you really believe this would be an atrocious wrong, then say the word and I will boot her. But you would be doing me an enormous favor if you would give me the go ahead to just let her stay. Again, I am hoping this has not caused any trouble.
--some asshole*

*Name changed to protect the guilty

I don't want to jinx it, but I'm about this close to having my summer sublet lined up, a two-bedroom house at the Marina del Rey-Culver City border that I'll be sharing with the SoCal law student who currently lives there. (No one I know.) It's located almost exactly at the tip of the white spiky part on this map, directly above the space between "Playa" and "Vista." I'm not sure what to add other than that the location fucking rocks, and so does the price. I'm pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it looks like I've got the place. Man, how cool is not being completely broke? Or, rather, going to be not completely broke. But still.

In the past week I have doubled the number of movies I've seen that are up for major Oscars this year: seeing Capote on Monday and Brokeback last night. I liked both, probably Capote a little more, but there's no question these are two really good movies.

The shame about Brokeback is that it's always going to be thought of as "gay cowboy movie," when in fact there's a whole lot of other interesting stuff going on there. Most movies nowadays seem to try to suck out all the ideas (compare Rollerball to Rollerball), but Brokeback is chock full of them. For one thing, it's about social class--these are two poor working-class guys who come from nothing. One of them marries up and starts leading a relatively normal middle-class life (which he interprets as "wealthy"), and the other continually struggles to feed a family in temporary and seasonal jobs. It's also about the U.S. West and rural America in the second half of last century. Jack ends up selling super-expensive equipment for use in agribusiness, while Ennis tries to continue the largely outmoded life of ranching. There are also complex family issues that arise for both men--some of which have little to do with what went on at Brokeback Mountain, and some which are directly connected. And also, of course, there's the butt sex.

One thing that surprises me after juxtaposing these two movies is that Brokeback is getting all the publicity for the gay angle, while that's been downplayed with regard to Capote. In some ways, Capote is the more progressive film, and the one that should scare the red-staters more. In Capote, a gay man is our (admittedly ambiguous, perhaps amoral) hero, and he's in an openly gay relationship, and it's hinted that he has dalliances on the road as well. You know what's made of this? Virtually nothing. If acceptance of homosexuality is all about people being allowed to be gay and having it treated as no big deal, like they're just a regular person whose life includes homosexuality as one aspect, then Capote's the perfect film for that. Brokeback no doubt gets more publicity on this point because it's the bigger movie with bigger stars, and because it's the central drama of the movie. But Brokeback is all about hand-wringing, hiding, teeth-gnashing, etc. You could say that one difference is that the butt sex in Brokeback happens in a red state wihle in Capote it's just about urbanite New Yorkers, so it's less threatening to Middle America. That's true to a point, but it's pretty clear in Capote that everyone knows who this guy is, and while it's not that no one cares, he certainly doesn't come to any direct violence or harm over it, for all the time he spends in western Kansas.

I recommend both films, and neither one would do the Oscars a disservice if it were Best Picture. Then again, they normally get this right in the sense that while it doesn't necessarily go to the best movie, it does go to a good movie. I've seen 40 Best Picture winners, and I'd only classify one of them as a bad movie--yes, Forrest Gump, I'm looking at you.

I'm currently in the 26th hour of my 48-hour Constitutionalism in South Africa takehome final. OK, currently currently I'm procrastinating, but I'll be back at said final soon. The rules forbid me from making any specific comments about it at this time, but I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that it's no fun.

On a totally unrelated note, what kind of a weird ego thing leads to people putting the words "serious inquiries only" in a classified ad? Do those people think that everyone else is openly inviting frivolous inquiries, which they have somehow foreclosed? Has anyone ever considered responding to one of these ads on a lark, but then seen the "serious inquiries only" label and thought the better of it?

Depending on which way you're traveling, the first three seconds when you get off a plane and are in the hallway thingie that they divert you into can be really beautiful or really cruel, because for those 3 seconds you know what the weather will be like half an hour from then when you finally exit the airport. Since I was traveling north today, cruel.

I continue to be impressed with Delta food service, as we had the choice of five complimentary snacks: peanuts, pretzels, cookies, crackers, or granola bar. Less impressive and much more annoying was this: when I bought my flights on Orbitz I picked seats, but those seat selections disappeared into the ether. So when I checked into Miami, I had a center seat for the first leg and no confirmed seat on the second. Luckily, I complained nicely in Miami and was somehow moved to an aisle despite the flight being overbooked. In Atlanta it was touch and go, and zones 1-7 had boarded before they got me a seat. But then the counter woman took one look at me and decided that me in a center seat was not in anyone's best interests, so she bumped some other poor schmuck from an exit row window seat. So everything turned out much better than I could have expected.

Also, on the Miami-Atlanta leg, I had the aisle next to a 7-9 year-old boy with his 12-14 year-old sister on the window. Two things struck me as notable about this girl: (1) she managed to so exaggerate her Long Island accent as to affect a Puerto Rican accent, and (2) she was easily the youngest person I've ever seen reading Cosmo.

I'm starting to look for my summer sublet, and it's already starting to feel like a pain in the ass. I thought I might have a good situation lined up, and then it fell apart over parking and utilities. I've been looking at lots of ads on Craigslist, and occasionally one sounds good, but the two problem are that my timeframe is so specific without lining up with school out there--UCLA is on quarters, so summer corresponds with the actual season rather than being mid-May to mid-August like I need. Any place I get is going to be sight unseen, so even if I really like the description of a place, I'll have some anxiety about the place until I actually arrive.

The real purpose of this post, though, was to say OMIGOD about a few of the ads I've come across on Craigslist LA: they range from I don't know what your scam is but I'm confident that it's trouble, to I know what your scam is and it's really sketchy, to my personal favorite, I'm literally just that (ahem) ballsy. That last one makes this guy sound downright charming. The ad that takes the cake is the guy whose primary goal is to Escape Rabbit Girl, and I think it's because of the way he alternates between making these totally bizarre statements about the current roommate and remembering to specify what he's actually looking for: I hate her...I need to get out...wood floors a plus....she smells...