march madness; my president is rad
i did not plan to sit on my ikea couch and watch television all night. i figured i would turn on the television and see how my mostly random March Madness picks were doing. however, sports sometimes do this thing to me that they don't do to most people "like" me, and i sat on the couch, reading for my thesis during commercials for a few hours, and then flipped between the VCU / UCLA game and Obama on Leno.
i haven't watched tv for this long since football season. there are some typical reasons NCAA is attractive in March. the games seem shorter (two twenty minute periods) maybe because they stop "less" (i put less in quotes 'cause they all like to foul each other all the time which stops the clock...) the kids are literally playing their hearts out, plus they get all emotional during and after the games. the sudden death element helps a lot, too-- whoever loses is DONE, gone, byebye.
then there's the underdog complex. i know i have one. i just goddamn want the little guy to beat the big guy. and not cause i want the big guy to lose, but because the unliklihood that the little guy will win and continue to win against all odds is very attractive, maybe very American. it's more fun when unlikely things happened.
this being said, i was particularly sad at the VCU loss to UCLA. okaay maybe i shouldn't have picked them on my bracket, but a) i'm not playing for money or against anyone, i'm just made some picks for fun and b) i had to pick a certain amount of underdogs, and i picked them. regardless of who i picked, VCU was on the tail of UCLA most of the game, if not sometimes even ahead of them. the game came down to the last few seconds, they had a decent chance, and they couldn't pull it off. this, is sad. i picked Michigan to win, they were underdogs, too, but in the little i read about the games today, they were sort of an expected unexpectation (am i allowed to say that?) so when they won i wasn't too surprised. i also only saw the very end of that one, so. W. Kentucky pulled through to defeat Illinois-- another one of my underdog victories!
maybe the problem with my underdog victories is that they are little victories on the larger scheme of my bracket. i don't have these double-digits ranked teams getting past the first round most of the time, and i don't think i have any of them making it to the third. my dad and my brother will be up on Sunday to celebrate my birthday early, and i am sure you will find us at some point at a Manhattan sports bar watching day two of the second round games. maybe that's why i like March Madness-- cause it's so near my birthday.
it's also cool that there are lots of games all at once. the "bailout" pizza commercials for Dominos, not so cool. but Obama on Leno at 11:35 was good to watch. i read a New York Times article about how he is less articulate without a teleprompter and only noticed it tonight. he stalls for time by saying, "Look," before most of his answers, but it's also good to see him in a less formal atmostphere, joking around and also talking about big issues (AIG, economic fiasco, alternative energy) in words easier to understand quicker than i read in the Times.
it's excited to see that my President is as excited as i am about cars that run on alternative energy.
i haven't watched tv for this long since football season. there are some typical reasons NCAA is attractive in March. the games seem shorter (two twenty minute periods) maybe because they stop "less" (i put less in quotes 'cause they all like to foul each other all the time which stops the clock...) the kids are literally playing their hearts out, plus they get all emotional during and after the games. the sudden death element helps a lot, too-- whoever loses is DONE, gone, byebye.
then there's the underdog complex. i know i have one. i just goddamn want the little guy to beat the big guy. and not cause i want the big guy to lose, but because the unliklihood that the little guy will win and continue to win against all odds is very attractive, maybe very American. it's more fun when unlikely things happened.
this being said, i was particularly sad at the VCU loss to UCLA. okaay maybe i shouldn't have picked them on my bracket, but a) i'm not playing for money or against anyone, i'm just made some picks for fun and b) i had to pick a certain amount of underdogs, and i picked them. regardless of who i picked, VCU was on the tail of UCLA most of the game, if not sometimes even ahead of them. the game came down to the last few seconds, they had a decent chance, and they couldn't pull it off. this, is sad. i picked Michigan to win, they were underdogs, too, but in the little i read about the games today, they were sort of an expected unexpectation (am i allowed to say that?) so when they won i wasn't too surprised. i also only saw the very end of that one, so. W. Kentucky pulled through to defeat Illinois-- another one of my underdog victories!
maybe the problem with my underdog victories is that they are little victories on the larger scheme of my bracket. i don't have these double-digits ranked teams getting past the first round most of the time, and i don't think i have any of them making it to the third. my dad and my brother will be up on Sunday to celebrate my birthday early, and i am sure you will find us at some point at a Manhattan sports bar watching day two of the second round games. maybe that's why i like March Madness-- cause it's so near my birthday.
it's also cool that there are lots of games all at once. the "bailout" pizza commercials for Dominos, not so cool. but Obama on Leno at 11:35 was good to watch. i read a New York Times article about how he is less articulate without a teleprompter and only noticed it tonight. he stalls for time by saying, "Look," before most of his answers, but it's also good to see him in a less formal atmostphere, joking around and also talking about big issues (AIG, economic fiasco, alternative energy) in words easier to understand quicker than i read in the Times.
it's excited to see that my President is as excited as i am about cars that run on alternative energy.
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