Final 4!!!!

Annnnnnd exhale. I guess I didn't expect it to be easy, but c'mon. If that shot goes in yesterday, I am in my car and halfway to Mexico by now. That might have been it for me. As it stands, we play arguably our worst game of the year (except for Sasha Kaun, he lived up to Lane's hype for the one of the few times this year. Be proud of your boy, Lane) and still advance to the Final 4. It was a gut-wrenching couple of hours, that's for sure. You could tell about 3 possessions in that we were gonna have one of those games where we almost seem like we're begging to lose. Let's hope we got that out of our system before next weekend.

We headed downtown a few hours before the game, to assure ourselves of a prime spot at Harbour Lights. I was starting to have some bad premonitions, the more people we talked to personally, and the more conversations we overheard. There was a lot of looking ahead to playing Carolina going on, like we had already beaten Davidson. I was guilty of this as well. Our whole reasoning for going downtown was so that we could join in the celebration afterwards. But things turned out OK, and the celebration afterwards was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Just an indescribable blur of hugging strangers, high-fiving people in cars as they pass by (until the amount of people in the streets completely shut traffic down), and yelling and cheering. I even crowd-surfed for the first time since the Sugar Ray concert/drinking debacle. Was that freshman year?

As we marched up and down Massachusetts street, Kyle and I did a fantastic job of running into a bar, buying giant beers, chugging them down 1/3 of the way, jamming them in our pockets and peg-legging it back to the street. Actually, I should say I did a good job of that; Kyle is probably still wringing beer out of his pants right now.



I gotta say, I don't understand the bracket standings. I had 7 of the Elite 8 teams correct, and all the Final 4 teams correct (I took a lot of shit from everyone telling me that all four 1 seeds couldn't do it; I told you they were the best four teams almost a year ago***) and yet there are three people ahead of me, all of whom had less of the Elite 8 teams and less of the Final 4 teams correct. How am I not in the lead? I guess I don't really care, though, if I end up winning, that means that KU didn't. So screw it.

I'm not even going to mention the matchup with He Who Must Not Be Named and North Carolina in the semifinals. Not yet. I'm not even close to being emotionally ready for that. For now I'm going to just enjoy the taste of Final 4 in my mouth right now. In case you're wondering, it tastes like a combination of day-old keg beer and coughed-up lung tissue, and it couldn't be more delicious. Days like yesterday are the reason I moved down here. Rock Chalk.

Me, Lane, Kyle, Kyle's mullet, and Jud. I had that same goofy grin on my face for about two and a half hours straight. Not pictured: the girl who got hit by a car sometime during all the chaos. What an idiot.

***That was my Memphis Tigers "We don't get any respect" impression. You suck, John Calipari.

A Letter To David Padgett

Dear Mr. David Padgett:

Let me be the first to apologize on behalf of all Kansas Jayhawk basketball fans for our actions in the fall of 2003/spring of 2004. It was classless of everybody to treat you the way we did. To take a fresh-faced, eager-to-please 18 year old with a neatly-tailored game and equally neatly-gelled haircut, and mercilessly ride him until he chooses to transfer, well....that was just wrong. Our bad. I will say that I personally had no part in the newspaper trashing you, or your fellow students bad-mouthing you behind your back (and to your face, I'm told), but I am surely not innocent. I can recall many instances where I was sitting in my living room, screaming at you to get your head in the game. I am as guilty as anyone.

However.....

Let's get one thing out on the table, David: you were kind of a little bitch. Let's be honest. You were a highly touted McDonald's All-American. You always had your hair spiked and gelled. You looked like you had just arrived at the game straight from your frat's spring formal, and you acted like it too. You chose number 44, which, along with your physical appearance and on-court abilities, immediately reminded every KU fan of Eric Chenowith (if there is ONE player in KU's storied history you DO NOT want to be compared to, it's Eric Chenowith.) You picked up silly fouls and whined to the refs, then looked over to the bench with a confused expression; very similar to how one frat brother would look at another when it was taking an inordinate amount of time for the hot-but-shy freshman girl to start getting sleepy after you put roofies in her keg cup. You complained about Bill Self not letting you "play your game" which was being a face-up power forward. It is at this point that I will remind you that you are currently playing center, with your back almost exclusively to the basket, even when you catch the ball at the top of the key.

But all that is neither here nor there, David. That was yesterday, this is today. Yesterday you were a freshman struggling to find his niche, under the microscope, playing for one of the top programs in the country; today you are the most important player on an Elite 8 team coached by the legendary Rick Pitino. Yesterday you were a boy; today you are a Man. Yesterday we were at odds with each other; today we share a common goal. Today yourself and KU fans alike are united in wanting to beat Roy Williams and the North Carolina Tar Heels.

Take out all your aggressions, which have been buried deep in your psyche for four years now, and unleash them on UNC. Take the faces of all those fans, classmates, boosters, and media who verbally tore you apart for the better part of 6 months of your life, and put those faces on your opponent tonight. That's not Ty Lawson coming into YOUR lane for a layup, that's the newspaper writer who called you softer than the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. That's not Tyler Hansbrough you're battling with for a rebound, that's the punk-ass kid in baggy jeans that told you that you "fucking sucked donkey dick, queer!" on your way to your Political Science class. Today is North Carolina's day of reckoning.

So do it David. Don't do it for me, don't do it KU fans all over the country, hell- don't even do it for Louisville. Do it for yourself. You've earned it.

Polychronopolous

"Appraisal Fees

Fees that you pay to find the fair market value of donated property are not deductible as contributions. You can claim them, subject to the 2%-of-adjusted-gross-income limit, as a miscellaneous itemized deduction on Schedule A (Form 1040). See Deductions Subject to the 2% Limit in Publication 529 for more information.

Contributions to Donor Advised Funds

You cannot deduct a contribution to a donor advised fund after February 13, 2007, if:
The qualified organization that sponsors the fund is a war veterans' organization, a fraternal society, or a nonprofit cemetery company, or
You do not have an acknowledgment from that sponsoring organization that it has exclusive legal control over the assets contributed.
There are also other circumstances in which you cannot deduct your contribution to a donor advised fund.
Generally, a donor advised fund is a fund or account in which a donor can, because of being a donor, advise the fund how to distribute or invest amounts held in the fund. For details, see Internal Revenue Code section 170(f)(18).
Partial Interest in Property
Generally, you cannot deduct a contribution of less than your entire interest in property. For details, see Partial Interest in Property under Contributions of Property, later.

Contributions of Property

If you contribute property to a qualified organization, the amount of your charitable contribution is generally the fair market value of the property at the time of the contribution. However, if the property has increased in value, you may have to make some adjustments to the amount of your deduction."

The preceding is an excerpt from IRS Publication 526. I apologize to those of you who actually read that whole thing. I felt it was necessary. Regrettably, this is a clear-cut case of the actions of few resulting in the punishment of many.

Apparently, I have been writing too much about college basketball lately, according to a couple of female readers who shall rename nameless. Hey, it's mid-fucking-March, what do you want from me? You're reading the blog of a guy who didn't go to Cancun for spring break with all his roommates when he was 19 years old because he "didn't want to miss a single minute of Kirk Hinrich's last tournament run." What do you think I'm gonna be writing about right now? Here is a breakdown of what is running through my brain all day during March:

45%......Taxes

45%......College basketball

8%........My next chili cheese wrap from Sonic

1%.........Whether or not it would be appropriate to hang up a poster of Kelly Kapowski in my office

1%.........Everything else

So, ladies/non-college basketball fans, unless you want me to write about the deductability of energy-efficient improvements to building property, or the exclusion rate of employers' annual contributions to simplified employee pension plans, or how bad I want to bang Kelly Kapowski (which I'll probably write about anyway at some point) you may just have to deal with the college hoops for a bit. I'll leave you with this picture, which has been making the rounds through facebook/email. I think it's hiiiiii-larious, me being a Star Wars geek and all.

This is great partly because of the half-empty bottle of booze on the nightstand, like the Stormtrooper has been drinking himself to sleep every night. Additionally, Stormtrooper costumes are just awesome.