Thinking about the flood, and the time period directly afterwards that was a "Golden Era" in my life, got me thinking about other Golden Eras- times in my life that I look back on very fondly for whatever reason (mostly drinking, sports, or Star Wars.) Without further ado:
April 1999- June 1999: No particular reason, sophomore year of high school was just kinda awesome. My classes were cakewalks, I had recently purchased my first car, and my biological father Chris Dudley led the New York Knicks to the NBA Finals as an 8 seed. Plus the day that Star Wars Episode I came out in theaters remains one of the top 10 most fun days of my life, and probably deserves its own post at some point. Long story short: a bunch of us ditched out of school to wait in line all day, and we ended up throwing an impromptu party on the Midco 10 front lawn. How a group of 25 sixteen-year-olds drinking, smoking, grilling burgers, and generally causing a ruckus didn't get busted is beyond me.
June 2001- September 2001: The entire year starting from here until Summer of 2002 was probably the best year of my life, but I split it into three distinct sections. This stretch was great because Ike and Jake became the first of our friends to move out and get their own apartment, so naturally we got drunk over there around 75 days in a row until we moved into the dorms. I also took my first real road trip, going out to Seattle and Portland for about a week. It was nothing short of magical. On the drive home I got my first taste of Red Bull, and subsequently drove straight from Portland all the way to Bismarck, until a large breakfast at a diner almost put me to sleep at the wheel and derailed my dream of driving the whole way by myself.
September 2001- May 2002: freshman year of college. So many shenanigans. So many girls. So many beers. So many laughs. Despite the fact that we incorporated drinking into almost every aspect of our life during this era (kickball in the quad, writing papers, night classes, morning classes on occasion- holla at me Kos) my only regret is that we didn't drink more.
May 2002- August 2002: the beginning of the Culligan Manor Era. No need to elaborate further.
October 2004: pretty simple- the Red Sox ran through the playoffs and I experienced "my" first championship, which was every bit as awesome as I imagined it growing up. It would've been a little better if they would've waited until Game 5 in St. Louis, so Dunph and I would've been in attendance, but watching them clinch in a riverboat casino in Sioux City (and subsequently learning how to play craps and losing all my ticket money, food money, merchandise money, and a couple hundo extra to boot) was pretty awesome too.
March 2005- June 2005: first, Noles, Fundy, Paul and I took a fantastic road trip to Chicago, Lousiville, and Indianapolis- which I could absolutely write a book about. You want to talk about running the gamut of emotions: The night at Howl at the Moon in L'ville (which included Schne and JV) is one of my top 5 greatest nights of my life; and yet, just three nights later, I was sleeping on a bridge in Indianapolis after KU lost to Bucknell and I had the girl I was dancing with at a club stolen away from me by none other than Ron Artest.
Besides that road trip, I took a trip to Augusta and went to The Masters with Bergman, and even though I have two disposable cameras worth of pictures, I still have to convince myself I was actually there. I don't like to throw around the term "breakthaking" very often, but it was breathtaking.
During this era, there seemed to be a fantastic run of parties, maybe because a lot of my friends were graduating (at least the ones who actually decided to graduate in four years) and people were going balls-out before they moved on. I also had an unprecedented run with gettin' some strange (earmuffs Alex) which I also attributed to the impending graduation. Knowing that you will be moving out of town in a matter of months is nature's best afrodisiac, and I took full advantage.
I also accomplished one of my lifelong dreams by drinking for 24 hours straight on Springfest, from 6 am to 6 am, with only a 19 minute nap and a few makeout sessions in between (20 minute naps were against the rules, and the guy who sat behind me in World Geography class wouldn't let me go further than 2nd base- what a tease.) The last Star Wars movie also came out, which not only gives me a warm feeling inside, but eliminates any possible cool-guy credibility that this paragraph might have given me at the beginning.
March 2008- May 2008: Obviously. I also included May, however, because of my first Kentucky Derby trip and the Las Vegas trip, which were both shitshows for the ages.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
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Saturday, March 28, 2009
Mourning Period
This has been, without a doubt, the best I have handled a KU tournament loss in my lifetime. I had my little half hour "cool down" period, where I flushed all calls and texties, and then spent a little bit of time bitching and moaning about the missed opportunities down the stretch. And then I moved on. It was definitely a tough loss to finish the season, giving away a 5 point lead with three minutes left, but there are plenty of reasons why I should stay positive:
- KU won the title last year. That should be a good enough reason by itself, but if there's one thing I'm good at, it's writing about college basketball for 10,000 words, when 3,000 would suffice. If there's two things I'm good at, it's that- and hitting on moms. So I'll continue.
- KU had no business even making it to the Sweet 16. Looking at KU's roster at the beginning of the year, my only hope was that they didn't pull a Florida and miss the tourney. When they survived the NDSU game, the season was a success as far as I'm concerned. Bill Self deserves every coach of the year award he wins this year.
- If your team has a fatal flaw, and their season eventually hinges on that fatal flaw, you gotta accept that the season probably isn't going to end well. For KU, that would be a lack of support besides Aldrich and Collins. Going into halftime I was concerned, because Tom Izzo is too good of a coach not to make adjustments to make those two less of a factor. Michigan St. was totally keying on them towards the end of the game, and no one else was willing to go and make a big play. The one negative thing I can say about this team was that the young guys really regressed in the tournament. They seemed like they were out there just trying not to screw up, instead of being aggressive. However....
- This is a very young team, and everyone's coming back a year older, better, and hungrier. I think Tyshawn Taylor is gonna be a special player by the time he's done....the jury is still out on the Morris twins. And how about my boy Brady Morningstar throwing down TWO dunks in one half? Those were, in all likelihood, the first two dunks of his career. He tried throwing one down against Missouri earlier this year and missed horribly, so during the first breakaway last night, I was understandably nervous. My running commentary got laughs from everyone watching the game with me: "Lay it in Brady, lay it in Brady, just lay- AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH throw it down!!!!!" They were laughing at me, not with me.
- There is a decent recruiting class coming in next year. I don't expect much from Elijah Johnson, mostly since he's a point guard and we already have Tyshawn, but Thomas Robinson is supposed to be a rebounding beast who'll hopefully rub off on the Morris twins, who react to physical contact about as favorably as the random girl I sat next to on a flight to Vegas, when she woke up to find me gazing into her eyes, gently stroking her cheek and whispering "You're beautiful when you're sleeping."
Plus Self picked up Jeff Withey, a seven-foot transfer from Arizona, and the word on the street is that Lance Stephenson, the #9 rated recruit in the country, is announcing on Wednesday that he's coming to KU. Normally I would be worried about him cutting into Brady's minutes next year, but it seems that the only guy who has a bigger boner for Brady than me is Bill Self. You know Brady's gonna get his, son.
- And finally, IF Aldrich and Collins come back: look out. KU then wouldn't lose anybody except two walk-on scrubs- although there would be a noticeable lack of a goofy redhead at the end of the bench, an underappreciated roster spot if there ever was one, and a KU staple ever since the days of Ol' Roy. Reading between the lines of all of Collins' and Aldrich's quotes (which I spend an embarrassing amount of time doing- I pick apart their interviews like a prosecuting attorney looking for holes in a murder trial) I would guess that Aldrich is staying, and Collins is leaving. This makes little sense, since Aldrich is a guaranteed top 10 pick, while Collins would be a 2nd rounder, if he gets drafted at all. But Aldrich is one of those Hansbrough types who loves being in college, while Collins has a two-year-old son and some baby mama drama to worry about, so he's itching to get paid in the shade. However, both have said that they will put their decisions in Self's hands, so I'm holding out hope that they both stick around and make KU a preseason top 5 team next year. It's tough; for the first seventeen years of my KU fandom, exactly two players left school early for the NBA (Pierce and Gooden.) Now there have been four in the last two years (Julian, Rush, Chalmers, and Arthur.)
Other tourney thoughts:
- Poor Dick Enberg is absolutely losing it. Normally I hate it when announcers who have been announcing game since I started watching sports retire (I still miss Pat Summerall, especially in the Madden video games) but it's time for Dick to hang it up. He messes up names, numbers, scores, fouls, etc. around 25-30 times a game, and that is probably a low estimate. If you are paying attention to the game, he literally cannot go three possessions in a row without mixing someone up. I'm waiting for the day where Jay Bilas snaps on air and starts doing both the play-by-play and the color by himself (similar to when Dunph, already playing shorthanded, kicked Stenejehm off the court during a 3-on-3 game, telling him he'd rather play by himself than on the same team as him.)
- Happiest guy on the planet today: Reggie Redding from Villanova, who apparently had a brain aneurysm during the inbounds play and unnecessarily launched the ball the length of the court with 10 seconds left. What the hell was he thinking? You know that play was dumb when it gets second-guessed by Alex, the same girl who calls DeJuan Blair "Mr. Arm-Band Man" as in "You are not very good at free throws, Mr. Arm-Band Man! You're ruining my bracket!"
But Scottie Reynolds hits the buzzer beater, and now nobody will remember his mistake. Except for his buddies, who 10 years from now will hopefully be sitting around watching the tourney and drinking some beers with him and saying things like "Hey, remember that one time when you were 10 seconds away from making the Final Four and you decided to recreate the Grant Hill/Christian Laettner play? That was awesome."
- I've always loved Bill Raftery as an announcer, but since I found out that Jud loves him as much as I do, we've taken the joke to another level this year. We spent most of Stoutsapaloozafestathon speaking in a Raftery voice "Ohhh! Bring on another round of goldschlager forthebigfella!"....."Wing paying his $140 tab in cash? Onions!" And now Jud and I have taken to calling our home base bar "Raftery's" or "Raffy's" because we're convinced that he'd love to get sauced there. We spent a solid 15 minutes last night debating how we could persuade him to start doing Big 12 games on ESPN, so we could take him out boozing after a Big Monday game.
{Side story: Jud's buddy Ryan has done some PR work for ESPN in the past, and one time got to sit down for dinner with a couple other scrubs, some producers, and Raftery, Jay Bilas, and Sean McDonough. After dinner, Ryan and the others were going to leave, thinking they were "intruding" on the bigwigs' social time, but Raftery instructed them to sit down, and proceeded to get everyone at the table shitfaced. As the evening wore on, Raftery started busting McDonough's balls and telling him to pick up the tab, to the point where a producer told Raftery to ease off, which caused Bilas to join in, and McDonough eventually left the table to go to his hotel room. So then Raftery and Bilas continue to talk shit about McDonough, revealing that they're not just breaking balls, they honestly don't like him. They also made accusations that he was not a real basketball fan, and gay to boot. So keep that in mind next time you're watching Louisville vs. Georgetown on Big Monday and those three are announcing together. Personally, I can't wait.}
- I said it before the tourney started (and for 4 months before that) but I'll reiterate: tomorrow's North Carolina/Oklahoma game is the national championship in my mind. It's too bad that injuries derailed Oklahoma into a 2 seed in Carolina's bracket, because this would've made one hell of a championship game.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch last year's national championship game for the 26th time. Maybe the semifinal game against Carolina too. I don't know, I don't know if I'll have enough time.
- KU won the title last year. That should be a good enough reason by itself, but if there's one thing I'm good at, it's writing about college basketball for 10,000 words, when 3,000 would suffice. If there's two things I'm good at, it's that- and hitting on moms. So I'll continue.
- KU had no business even making it to the Sweet 16. Looking at KU's roster at the beginning of the year, my only hope was that they didn't pull a Florida and miss the tourney. When they survived the NDSU game, the season was a success as far as I'm concerned. Bill Self deserves every coach of the year award he wins this year.
- If your team has a fatal flaw, and their season eventually hinges on that fatal flaw, you gotta accept that the season probably isn't going to end well. For KU, that would be a lack of support besides Aldrich and Collins. Going into halftime I was concerned, because Tom Izzo is too good of a coach not to make adjustments to make those two less of a factor. Michigan St. was totally keying on them towards the end of the game, and no one else was willing to go and make a big play. The one negative thing I can say about this team was that the young guys really regressed in the tournament. They seemed like they were out there just trying not to screw up, instead of being aggressive. However....
- This is a very young team, and everyone's coming back a year older, better, and hungrier. I think Tyshawn Taylor is gonna be a special player by the time he's done....the jury is still out on the Morris twins. And how about my boy Brady Morningstar throwing down TWO dunks in one half? Those were, in all likelihood, the first two dunks of his career. He tried throwing one down against Missouri earlier this year and missed horribly, so during the first breakaway last night, I was understandably nervous. My running commentary got laughs from everyone watching the game with me: "Lay it in Brady, lay it in Brady, just lay- AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH throw it down!!!!!" They were laughing at me, not with me.
- There is a decent recruiting class coming in next year. I don't expect much from Elijah Johnson, mostly since he's a point guard and we already have Tyshawn, but Thomas Robinson is supposed to be a rebounding beast who'll hopefully rub off on the Morris twins, who react to physical contact about as favorably as the random girl I sat next to on a flight to Vegas, when she woke up to find me gazing into her eyes, gently stroking her cheek and whispering "You're beautiful when you're sleeping."
Plus Self picked up Jeff Withey, a seven-foot transfer from Arizona, and the word on the street is that Lance Stephenson, the #9 rated recruit in the country, is announcing on Wednesday that he's coming to KU. Normally I would be worried about him cutting into Brady's minutes next year, but it seems that the only guy who has a bigger boner for Brady than me is Bill Self. You know Brady's gonna get his, son.
- And finally, IF Aldrich and Collins come back: look out. KU then wouldn't lose anybody except two walk-on scrubs- although there would be a noticeable lack of a goofy redhead at the end of the bench, an underappreciated roster spot if there ever was one, and a KU staple ever since the days of Ol' Roy. Reading between the lines of all of Collins' and Aldrich's quotes (which I spend an embarrassing amount of time doing- I pick apart their interviews like a prosecuting attorney looking for holes in a murder trial) I would guess that Aldrich is staying, and Collins is leaving. This makes little sense, since Aldrich is a guaranteed top 10 pick, while Collins would be a 2nd rounder, if he gets drafted at all. But Aldrich is one of those Hansbrough types who loves being in college, while Collins has a two-year-old son and some baby mama drama to worry about, so he's itching to get paid in the shade. However, both have said that they will put their decisions in Self's hands, so I'm holding out hope that they both stick around and make KU a preseason top 5 team next year. It's tough; for the first seventeen years of my KU fandom, exactly two players left school early for the NBA (Pierce and Gooden.) Now there have been four in the last two years (Julian, Rush, Chalmers, and Arthur.)
Other tourney thoughts:
- Poor Dick Enberg is absolutely losing it. Normally I hate it when announcers who have been announcing game since I started watching sports retire (I still miss Pat Summerall, especially in the Madden video games) but it's time for Dick to hang it up. He messes up names, numbers, scores, fouls, etc. around 25-30 times a game, and that is probably a low estimate. If you are paying attention to the game, he literally cannot go three possessions in a row without mixing someone up. I'm waiting for the day where Jay Bilas snaps on air and starts doing both the play-by-play and the color by himself (similar to when Dunph, already playing shorthanded, kicked Stenejehm off the court during a 3-on-3 game, telling him he'd rather play by himself than on the same team as him.)
- Happiest guy on the planet today: Reggie Redding from Villanova, who apparently had a brain aneurysm during the inbounds play and unnecessarily launched the ball the length of the court with 10 seconds left. What the hell was he thinking? You know that play was dumb when it gets second-guessed by Alex, the same girl who calls DeJuan Blair "Mr. Arm-Band Man" as in "You are not very good at free throws, Mr. Arm-Band Man! You're ruining my bracket!"
But Scottie Reynolds hits the buzzer beater, and now nobody will remember his mistake. Except for his buddies, who 10 years from now will hopefully be sitting around watching the tourney and drinking some beers with him and saying things like "Hey, remember that one time when you were 10 seconds away from making the Final Four and you decided to recreate the Grant Hill/Christian Laettner play? That was awesome."
- I've always loved Bill Raftery as an announcer, but since I found out that Jud loves him as much as I do, we've taken the joke to another level this year. We spent most of Stoutsapaloozafestathon speaking in a Raftery voice "Ohhh! Bring on another round of goldschlager forthebigfella!"....."Wing paying his $140 tab in cash? Onions!" And now Jud and I have taken to calling our home base bar "Raftery's" or "Raffy's" because we're convinced that he'd love to get sauced there. We spent a solid 15 minutes last night debating how we could persuade him to start doing Big 12 games on ESPN, so we could take him out boozing after a Big Monday game.
{Side story: Jud's buddy Ryan has done some PR work for ESPN in the past, and one time got to sit down for dinner with a couple other scrubs, some producers, and Raftery, Jay Bilas, and Sean McDonough. After dinner, Ryan and the others were going to leave, thinking they were "intruding" on the bigwigs' social time, but Raftery instructed them to sit down, and proceeded to get everyone at the table shitfaced. As the evening wore on, Raftery started busting McDonough's balls and telling him to pick up the tab, to the point where a producer told Raftery to ease off, which caused Bilas to join in, and McDonough eventually left the table to go to his hotel room. So then Raftery and Bilas continue to talk shit about McDonough, revealing that they're not just breaking balls, they honestly don't like him. They also made accusations that he was not a real basketball fan, and gay to boot. So keep that in mind next time you're watching Louisville vs. Georgetown on Big Monday and those three are announcing together. Personally, I can't wait.}
- I said it before the tourney started (and for 4 months before that) but I'll reiterate: tomorrow's North Carolina/Oklahoma game is the national championship in my mind. It's too bad that injuries derailed Oklahoma into a 2 seed in Carolina's bracket, because this would've made one hell of a championship game.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch last year's national championship game for the 26th time. Maybe the semifinal game against Carolina too. I don't know, I don't know if I'll have enough time.
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