first efforts

Basketball Girl's Ode to March Madness

(The following should be sung to the tune of "My Favorite Things")

With the arrival of spring comes March Madness; nothing else fills up my heart with such gladness

I love when Clark Kellogg does his halftime gigs; these are a few of my favorite things!

Feel free to contribute additional verses.

Once again I'm hosting a tournament pool on Yahoo. If you're interested drop me an email and I'll send instructions for joining ([email protected]). It's free to enter and to the victor goes the spoils. To the losers goes the famed Cubs Loser Prize. 

Basketball girl

This is Basketball Girl, my beloved's awesome gift to me for Valentine's Day -- in honor of my little basketball problem, of course. According to her informative box, she is a metal windup toy inspired by "an old Japanese toy titled 'Pretty Girl with Ponytail Playing Bouncing the Ball'." When my beloved and I fired her up this past weekend, we discovered that this pretty girl has, shall we say, some interesting features. Not only does her right hand very skillfully bounce the basketball, but her left hand engages in a hilarious reciprocal movement that can only be described as "ass-slapping."

If you want to check her out for yourself, she'll be taking up residence in Lincoln Hall this week.

Who needs photosynthesis when you have a flask?

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education:

"Officials at Stanford University have fired the student who served as the university's bouncy tree mascot for boozing it up inside her costume. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Erin Lashnits, a 23-year-old biology major, was seen to be drinking out of a flask during a men's basketball game last week against the University of California at Berkeley. Tests found she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 percent, and she was cited for public drunkenness. She apologized, saying she hoped the incident didn't hurt the Stanford band, which oversees the tree. A university spokesman later pointed out that 'the tree's movement is usually consistent with that of someone who's had something to drink.'"

Illini out of fashion

Whew, the Illini managed to hold off Northwestern tonight. The team has been struggling  lately and I think I know why. Forget the fact that Weber doesn't emphasize free throws or that we often struggle against the zone. The real culprit?  Fashion. Let's take a look at the facts...

Exhibit A: Dee Brown's socks. Dee's trademarks are his headband and his tall socks. Yet, inexplicably, Dee showed up at the Wisconsin game in short socks and he's been in short socks ever since. Has the NCAA recently passed some sort of no-tall-socks rule? What if all of Dee's power comes from his tall socks? Is nobody else worried about this?

Exhibit B: James Augustine's hair. After a whole season of James-with-grown-out-hair, he shaved it off -- also for the Wisconsin game. Since then, he's grown it out again and shaved it off again. Does this apparent indecisiveness make anybody else nervous?

Clark and Cara, sittin' in a tree

I am so tempted to wail and moan about the Illini men's loss to Penn State on Saturday. I wasn't in town, so I couldn't watch it on TV. And I'm actually glad I didn't. After seeing the score and brief clips of Rich McBride's "controversial" last-second shot, it's tempting to wonder how, why, and whose fault. But I prefer to start the week on an upbeat note, so instead I want to talk about...

...my undying love for Clark Kellogg. Clark Kellogg, for those of you who are not college basketball fans, is just about the cutest, most perfectest, wonderfullest basketball commentator in the world. He's lots of other things, of course, but mainly he's my Number One Crush. My love for Clark goes back many years. I'll get to see him on TV this coming weekend when he calls the Illinois-Ohio State game for CBS. No matter that he's a former Ohio State player himself. I know that Clark will be fair. It's one of the many, many reasons that I love him. And I hope he wears his glasses. I like Clark best when he's wearing his glasses. Little, round, silver geeky professor glasses. Adorable.

Thundering who...?

My beloved sent me this SI.com article this morning; he did time in Fargo and knows a little something about the "thundering herd."

NDSU 62, Wisconsin 55. This is why I love college basketball.