It's a live blog!

Given the fantastic success of KC in HD, I have extended the brand and helped create "It's a live blog," a website dedicated to live blogging.

I've already sunk money into this venture (ten bucks) so I am highly invested in its success.

What will we be live blogging about? Everything.

But so far that translates into one episode of American Gladiators. We hope to branch out soon.

Check it out: http://www.itsaliveblog.com

Mive most marvelous Marvel movies

When computers became advanced enough to reliably create realistic moving images of men in spandex crashing through brick buildings, Marvel knew the time had come to make lots of movies about nerdy guys getting really buff to beat up bad guys and then get moody about it afterwards.

Most of these movies were not very good, but five stick out as success stories.

Well, ok, only four do, but four doesn't seem like enough for a substantial list so I threw one more in there.

The movies that occupy slots 5-3 are all from franchises wrecked by truly atrocious third installments. I haven't re-watched any of them so I don't remember much about them. As such I will glibly gloss over them in a few short paragraphs.

#5 - Spider-Man
I'm pretty sure Spider-Man is the first in a series of movies that establish the origins of Bruce Campbell. There was also a guy in a red suit portrayed by a particularly athletic CGI gummy bear.

#4 - Spider-Man 2
Settles once and for all who would win in a fight between an arachnid and an octopus. Who can forget when Alfred Molina goes to the arcade and a radioactive claw machine bites him? In all, Spider-Man 2 was a good movie that might have been great if only Sam Raimi had thought to throw in more inappropriate references to past movies he's made.

#3 - X2: X-Men United
The touching story of men with two X chromosomes. Movie tagline: "Some call them mutants... others call them women."

#2 - Iron Man
Who knew Jeff Bridges could be so menacing? Better yet, who knew all it would take to make Jeff Bridges menacing was to shave his head? Bald is the new black hat.

I have only one substantial complaint against Iron Man: Samuel L. Jackson should not look like a pirate. I don't care if that's what his character looked like in the comic book. There are only two accessories on the planet that can make Sam Jackson look like he isn't capable of blowing up another man's head simply by shouting the F-word really loudly. One is an eyepatch. The other is a lightsaber (though to be fair, maybe it wasn't the lightsaber. Maybe it was the fact that his goofy jedi name sounded like a combination cleaning product/self-protection spray... Use it to combat grime on your windows or to fend off rapists! Mace Windu, new from Procter and Gamble!)

#1 - Captain America
It shouldn't take much to prove to you this is a cinematic masterpiece.

"But KC," you begin to ask me before being interrupted by a comma and a quotation mark, "how could you possibly know whether or not Captain America is a great movie?"

Well I watched parts of it on YouTube.

"Is a tiny pixelated recap of a film really enough to judge its greatness?"

Must one watch an entire sunset to determine its beauty?



This is a film about a guy who becomes a superhero not because he felt an overpowering urge to help people, but because he drove off a cliff and someone reminded him people used to make fun of his dad. This is a film about about a guy with a 12-inch vertical leap complimented by the incredible ability to teleport dozens of feet in the air using nothing more than very basic linear editing techniques. This is also a film about another guy named Christopher Lee who has been in some pretty cool movies, but who could never escape the typecasting that resulted from playing "Miguel" in this one.

In other words, this is a film that appears to have only a coincidental relationship with the comic book character it gets its name from. Despite this and the fact that the title does not contain a noun for the masculine gender, I assure you this is most definitely a finely crafted superhero movie.

Friends, I need only write three words to convince you to go pick this up at Blockbuster in the American Flag-themed vehicle of your choice: Reb Brown. You see? I only needed two. Truly Captain America is a film that surpasses all expectations.

Reb Brown, star of Space Mutiny and many other quality films that I haven't yet looked up, is a spectacular actor perfectly cast as the title character. Brown's emotional range is superb. He uses a variety of facial expressions to communicate things like, "Oh" and "I am studying your eyebrows intensely for mites."

I can't be the only one waiting with bated breath until the Avengers crossover movie Marvel has planned for 2011. Right now I'm trying to suppress a grin thinking about the inevitable scene depicting a crotchety, 63-year-old Reb Brown scolding a spry, 46-year-old Robert Downey, Jr. for using his rocket boots to kick up mud on the American Moped of Justice. Oh that Iron Man! He'd learn a thing or two about crime fighting if he'd had to face bad guys with nothing more than a plastic shield and the vacant, slack-jawed stare of a TV-show high school jock!

The movie critic critic: The Host, The Incredible Hulk, Kung Fu Panda

Welcome to an exciting new feature. For every movie I see, I'll post my analysis of a critic's opinion about that movie.

What you should expect from this exciting new feature: A full, nuanced explanation of a movie review based on an explanation given to me by the critic himself that is entirely fabricated. That is, I will write as though I have interviewed the critic about his review when in fact I have magically pulled the interpretation that follows from my behind.

What you should not expect from this exciting new feature: An opinion backed up by research or even a full reading of the movie review. It is much faster and easier for me to read blurbs and then make a mad dash to judgment.

The Incredible Hulk

"By the time the Hulk is battling the Abomination it's simply watching two special effects go after each other. Were Norton and Roth even on the set?" - Daniel M. Kimmel, Worcester Telegram & Gazette (review)

I would have enjoyed this film more had it been acted out with sock puppets. Also, every character should have been voiced by Rowlf.


The Host

"Can 93% of American movie critics be wrong? On the soft and squishy Rotten Tomatoes website, an amazing 70 out of 75 critics gave a thumbs up to The Host, a hokey South Korean monster movie that makes Godzilla look like The Godfather." - Thomas Delapa, Boulder Weekly (review)

I work for the newspaper from The Flintstones. I spent the majority of my review talking about stuff entirely unrelated to the movie I was supposed to be writing about, but when I finally got around to it, I boldly raised my voice in opposition to the unjust enjoyment reviewers experienced while watching The Host. If it were up to me, all monster movies would feature rubbery dinosaurs knocking over Playmobil sets.


Kung Fu Panda

"And honestly, it’s the most entertaining DW Animation project since, well, ever. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t formulaic or dripping with bullshit sentiment about how 'everyone can succeed if they just believe in themselves.' I don’t know where this started, but I don’t think it does any service to children to feed them that line of crap." - Pete Vonder Haar, Film Threat (review)

RAAAAAAR! MOVIE THEMES AIMED AT CHILDREN BAD! TEACHING CHILDREN SELF-CONFIDENCE BAD! CURSING IN A REVIEW OF A CHILDREN'S MOVIE BAD-ASS!

---------------------------

Today's bonus discussion question: Should I have made a "HULK SMASH" joke somewhere in this post?

Christine Brennan knows more about being a national columnist than I do

This is follow-up to an earlier entry. Expect another piece on some of the issues raised in the previous post a little bit later after I've done all the legwork. You can read the first part here.

When I write things on my blog about people I don't know personally, I do so secure in the knowledge that they will never read what I've posted. I assume they are too stupid to use advanced Web 2.0 tools like Google. I'm veiled in an impenetrable cloak of Internet anonymity that allows me to disclose how much I hate other members of college basketball message boards without risking physical harm.

I rest assured that I'm completely untraceable... except when I'm not. Who would have guessed that putting my name in the title of my blog would prove my undoing?

On April 1, I wrote about USA Today columnist Christine Brennan. I titled it, "Do you understand what your job entails?"

"Ha!" I thought. "Take that, newspaper lady who graciously agreed to speak to my sports journalism class senior year! You thought you were talking to a group of timid college students. Little did you know you had a blogging superstar in your midst!"

Then I turned off my computer, sighed contentedly and waited for my readers (a strong, three-person support group, nearly half of which publicly admits to visiting my site) to pour over my latest offering. Brennan would never know how badly I had damaged her e-reputation, but my flock of rabid fans would.

And that's where the story ended. Or at least, that's where it would have ended if not for the fact that Christine Brennan owns at least one computer that is capable of using the Internet.

The next day I received an email from my professor. Brennan had found my blog and she wanted to talk to me.

Oops.

I had written primarily to criticize her for saying that she didn't often look at the reader comments under the online versions of her USA Today columns. Having been a part of an online newspaper in high school, I have strong feelings on the subject. The Internet has changed the way news media operates and I don't always feel that people who joined the industry when "dot com" sounded like editing shorthand for forgotten punctuation get that.

I read back over what I'd written after I received the email and wondered if perhaps I'd been a bit... overzealous. In hindsight, calling her "smug" and "cocky" might not have helped strengthen my argument.

Her offer to sit down and meet with me also failed to lend credence to the aloof portrait I painted of her.

We met at Politics & Prose last week to discuss what she took issue with in my blog. She'd already told me on the phone right after I'd written it, but I'd been a bit too shocked at the time to think to take notes. This time I was armed with pen and paper.

"We're not talking about the cure for cancer here," she told me after we shook hands. That put me at ease. It was good to know that my blog entry fell somewhere below matters of life and death on her list of important things to talk about.

We then got down to the matter at hand. I'm going to break into a pseudo-Q-and-A format here, which my old high school newspaper adviser would tell me is a very lazy way to do things, but hey, this is a blog and I'm not getting paid.

Where, in her opinion, had I gone wrong?

Well, to start off, she felt I may have gone a bit overboard when I wrote the following: "Did you know she gave Tony Kornheiser the ideas for many of his columns back when he actually still wrote for The Washington Post...?"

Fair enough. I was trying to be funny, but I guess I took what she said out of context. She clarified for me: "When I covered the Redskins, Tony and I talked about column ideas." That sounds similar to what I wrote, but there is a distinction. My statement makes it sound like she told him what to think. Her explanation defines her role as more of a sounding board. She was the Post's Redskins beat reporter and what I believe she means is that they would sometimes discuss what was going on with the team.

As for the main thrust of my post, Brennan agreed with my central point, she just didn't think she "was the person to make that with." As she noted, she had told our class she does her best to respond to every email that comes her way.

But what's the difference between comments and email and why does one deserve a response while the other sometimes gets ignored?

Here she reminded me of the way anonymous Internet tough guys work. She referred to the "food fight" going on in the comment section on several occasions. Under many articles, she said, the commenters end up attacking one another, leaving a messy argument she doesn't always have time to wade into.

"Even if I wanted to email Dirtydog37, how would I do that?" she asked.

I checked out the USA Today comment section briefly and even registered, but I'm not entirely sure if there's a way to publicly display your email address in your user profile. There's an option to send a message, but I don't know whether or not USA Today discourages its writers from using that feature. Dirtydog37, if you're reading this, email me. I've got her number.

I looked through some of the comments on her articles and the tenor of the discussion and the number of replies varied widely based, as one would expect, on what the topic was. Certainly there are instances of personal attacks ("She is a media Tiger butt kisser. She's also an Obama butt kisser as well. It's true about meida [sic], and especially media "chicks", they're Obama-girls and Tiger-girls"), but some of the articles produced fairly focussed replies that stuck to the issues she brought up in her column.

That isn't to say I don't see where she's coming from. In addition to her obligations at USA Today, her website describes her as a "commentator for ABC News, ESPN, NPR and Fox Sports Radio." That doesn't leave much time for anything else. "At some point you have to go, 'Where are the hours in the day?'" she explained.

I should explain that I wasn't advocating that she spend the day constantly clicking the refresh button on her column nor was I saying that I thought she should respond to every reader. I simply felt it was important to get a sense of what people thought of her writing and possibly to acknowledge the readers from time to time.

Clearly she does that. She even took the time to sit down with a recent college grad who essentially depicted her as an egomaniac based on one very limited interaction.

I suppose I can maybe cut her a little slack.

So did anything positive come out of what I'd written initially?

"Since our conversation [on the phone], I do look at the comments more."

Ha! Take that!

A man called inclement weather: Introduction

Most people have bosses with names like "Todd" or "Bill" or "Think of common female name to show I'm not sexist and can imagine a woman in a leadership role."

These are good names. They are normal names. They indicate a dependable upbringing and in turn a likely well-adjusted individual.

If your boss's name is Bowser, you are a video game character and none of this applies to you.

And if your boss's name is Storm, you should follow these steps to determine if your chosen job is the appropriate one for you:

1. Examine yourself for mutant powers.
Likely outcome: You are unable to shoot elemental projectiles or shape-shift in some way.
What that means: You are not an X-Man and your boss is probably not a white haired lady who looks like Halle Berry.

2. Note whether your salary or hourly wage sounds impressive when you say it out loud.
Likely outcome: Announcing your income out loud elicits laughter from third parties or an involuntary, exaggerated clown frown on your face.
What that means: You are not making enough money and you have embarrassed yourself in public.

If your results match the likely outcomes above, consider the following: Your boss has a really stupid name. You have associated yourself with him.

I tell you this because I worked for a man named Storm. He was a strange character with delusions of grandeur and a shady past I've only just recently discovered.

He provided me with a job I would describe as simultaneously the worst job I've ever had and the most hilarious job I've ever had.

So join me - won't you? - on a journey of immensely bizarre proportions. Or, if you lack a time machine, please read my description of a journey of immensely bizarre proportions.

NEXT TIME ON A MAN CALLED INCLEMENT WEATHER: Signs of Stormy Weather! (I meet Storm)

Texas and Connecticut in the house

I was poking around my site numbers tonight and I saw the predictable locations: Silver Spring... DC... Silver Spring... DC... oh look, someone from Laurel. Shocking stuff really. I don't know specifically who these readers are, but I can make some educated guesses and the Florida visit (Hi, Nicole!) is fairly self-evident.

There were a couple that had me completely stumped though: Wallingford, Connecticut and Frisco, Texas. Who are you? Frisco sounded vaguely familiar, but I may have been thinking of Brisco County Jr. or quite possibly even The Count of Monte Cristo. Wallingford I've never heard of before in my life, but I'm sure it's a fascinating place full of... walls. It also makes me think of fording the river in Oregon Trail so I assume you know something of losing oxen where you come from.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say: Hey! There's no reason to be ashamed of visiting my totally awesome blog. It contains at least trace amounts of fun and many words that I claim are hilarious.

If you are long lost acquaintances from my distant Facebooking past, oh dears Wallingford and Frisco, you should definitely let me know so we can rekindle our no-doubt-once-vibrant friendship.

Perhaps you both prefer to remain unspecified readers. I apologize if I've just overstepped some privacy boundary. If you'd like to keep this all hush-hush, you could always call me on my cellphone and whisper your identities to me. No one else would know. I promise.

Of course, if you were random visitors passing through on your way to other corners of the Internet, you most likely will not see this and that is sad. I'm considering making road trips to your respective towns and plastering your public meeting spaces and telephone poles with printouts of my entries and big bold words up top that read, "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BLOG?"

Most extreme escalator challenge

I have a strange feeling many words have been written about this subject already, but I must succinctly add to the cacophony of dumbstruck voices.

When I see a man with six pack abs wearing a blue unitard boarding an escalator, my assumption is generally that he will make it to the top. He has the muscles to get him there and the tight clothing he needs to prevent snags.

This is why watching American Gladiators is so disappointing. When your competitors are too exhausted to run up a gently sloping travelator, it's time to come up with a new final act. There's no doubt that it's hilarious watching the pained expression on a grown man's face as he is gently laid to rest on a rubber mat after an agonizingly slow descent from a three-foot climb, but at the same time, it's sort of tough to swallow an ending where two physically fit contestants are defeated by the moving walkway we so often see children run across in the opposite direction at an airport.

The producers need to do something to give this at least the appearance of difficulty. I understand the contenders are tired after a grueling battery of tests against gladiators with giant tumors for limbs, but it just isn't satisfying. While I must admit that "travelator" sounds sort of like a vacation-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger and therefore kind of lends the event some action cred, I think in this case it's alright to force some company on well enough and make some changes. Let's at least douse the ropes in gasoline so when one of the competitors makes that shameful slide back down to the bottom, there's a chance the friction might cause the whole thing to light up.

Also, while I applaud the effort to more severely punish the competitors for not making it across the obstacles this season, a six-foot deep ball pit is somehow less terrifying than a wall of fire. These are two concepts that really don't gel all that well. For consistency's sake, you've got to go with one or the other.

I guess what we all need to take away from this is that if toddlers routinely use an element of your obstacle course, it probably won't look all that intimidating on television.

And now a brief sports observation

If you are a camera operator and LeBron James is driving the lane, you should immediately tilt down directly at the floor because gravity will almost certainly viciously blindside him at some point on his way to the basket.

I'd like to call on the NBA to swaddle LeBron in bubble wrap and a protective layer of Jell-O before every game because it just isn't fair that he has to deal with g-forces well in excess of those normally experienced by jet pilots while his competitors are babied with a gravitational pull that is more closely associated with reality.

It is remarkable and heroic that LeBron does not burst into flames as he hurdles toward the hardwood at supersonic speeds, completing his descent by exploding through the floorboards. A lesser player would scream in anguish as his jersey literally disintegrates due to the friction and would not find the inner strength to rise to his feet and take two completely unguarded shots like a man.

They shoot Dukies, don't they?

I’ve always considered the state of Maryland to be my home. I was born there. I got my driver’s license there. I developed my professional sports allegiances there.

When I entered my teenage years, the Maryland Terrapins began their rise to prominence. I followed the team’s progress religiously. Juan Dixon and Steve Blake were common household names across the state and I watched with intense interest when they finally broke through and made the Final Four in 2001.

And boy was I relieved when the Duke Blue Devils knocked them off. I wore my Duke jersey with unrivaled pride and a sense of intense superiority around my high school that week. The other students gnashed their teeth, but the only comeback they had was the one I’d heard over and over since sixth grade and the one I continue to hear to this day: “You live in Maryland. What the hell is wrong with you?”

No team in this area is more reviled than Duke. The Dallas Cowboys are universally hated by fans of the metro area’s most important franchise, but I don’t think even that measures up. Some in the area root for the Cowboys just to be contrarian and they make their presence felt on local sports talk radio.

But no one around here would ever admit Coach K is one of the greats without simultaneously insinuating that he somehow convinced all those McDonald’s All-Americans to attend Duke with cash he stole from an orphanage. Not unless one had a previous affiliation of course.

And that’s really the only good reason to root for Duke if, as in my case, you didn’t even attend the school. Its student body is made up primarily of rich white kids with SAT scores showing off one of two things: their intelligence or the amount of money their parents paid for tutors and private lessons.

So I can understand. It’s not the kind of place public school kids in suburban Maryland readily relate to. If I weren’t saddled with a sister who graduated from Duke the year Elton Brand and four other players got drafted in the first round, I’d be inclined to tear my hair out every time Dickie V assaulted his vocal chords with another bout of compliments for Blue Devil “diaper dandies” too.

Maryland basketball enthusiasm seems to wax and wane now based entirely on the current length of the team’s winning streak, but hatred for Duke seems to be operating at peak efficiency. It's every bit as vibrant as it was the day Jason Williams spurred a ten-point comeback in the final minute of a game at Cole Field House. My buddies from home all prayed to every deity from every major religion in the hopes that one of them would descend on the court and swat away Duke’s game-winning shot against Belmont. They still suggest that I not walk around College Park in my Duke attire because even though I’m a Blue Devil by birth, they begrudgingly acknowledge my friendship and they’d rather not see me get beaten up by an angry, torch-wielding mob. And they still enter a state of depression every time Duke gets the best of them.

When I bragged to them about American University, the school I’m actually graduating from, knocking off the Terps back in December, most of them shrugged and got on with their lives. I may go to a school with a student body made up of predominantly rich white kids, but at least it’s not a school with a legendary basketball program.

Losing to a school like that would be too much to bear.

How to respond like an adult

Back in December I decided I finally wanted to join the college paper. I'd never had a whole lot of respect for the publication rightly or wrongly, but it always seemed to me that they were in need of decent writers and I really wanted a column.

So I emailed the features editor and asked what I needed to do. He got back to me about a week later.

Thanks for your e-mail. What are you looking to write about? If you're still interested, go ahead and send me a list of the top 3-5 things you'd like to write about in a column and we can discuss it further. Also, send me at least two sample clips, so I can get a feel for your writing style...

Fair enough...

along with a 300-500 word statement explaining more on why you would like to have your own column and what it would mean to you.

Say what? What would it mean to me? When did this become an application to attend a special summer camp? I was genuinely dumbfounded. How could I possibly answer that question beyond responding with the obvious "I'd like to see my name in the paper?"

I sat and stared at my monitor for a couple minutes wondering if I could possibly make the sarcastic response that was sure to follow believably convey that I thought joining his paper was a life-altering opportunity. I gave up.

What would writing for The Eagle mean to me? Well first, let me tell you what I think of when I think of eagles. I think of integrity. I think of honesty. I think of men’s hair loss because the eagle is both masculine and, in America, bald.

I can only assume, because I’m not going to do any research, that these were the three things the founders of this proud paper thought of too when they named their publication after an animal, and I’m 100% behind that decision. I am myself very honest and contain large quantities of integrity. Though I sport a full head of hair, I would be more than willing to rock the naked noggin if it meant seeing my name in The Eagle.

I never sent it. I couldn't meet the minimum word requirement.

I haven't forgotten

I said I was hoping to have a follow-up to the Brennan post within a week.

That obviously hasn't happened. I've just found myself too swamped with work to put in the kind of time I'd like to put into it.

I sent an email to Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post asking if he'd mind if I sent along some questions since he actually works in the field I was mouthing off about. He said he'd help out, but I haven't had a chance to get the questions to him.

I promise I haven't totally dropped this. To my quarter-dozen readers: don't worry. It's coming.

Priorities

Their eyeballs roll
First in sockets
Then on the floor
Oh the stupidity!
The irritation!
What words they were
That caused expression of annoyance
To take precedence over sight

Memphis-Kansas overtime

1:58 – Memphis has only been able to muster two points in OT thus far. The way they’ve played with the lead, there’s almost a chance they’re better off playing from behind.

1:05 – Maybe not. Rush grabs his own rebound and scores after a breakaway.

0:45.1 – Douglas-Roberts has orders to foul apparently… but why? Memphis is down only three with plenty of time to go and as Packer says, the Tigers looked pretty solid defensively.

0:12.8 – Kansas at the line up five. Cue depressing shots of Memphis players on the bench realizing that Memphis players are not shooting the free throws for Kansas. This game certainly looks over.

0:00 – 75-68. Memphis loses. Roy Williams cries. Kansas reasserts its position as one of the top basketball schools of all time.

You can't help but feel bad watching Memphis players get covered in confetti. Someone should have provided them umbrellas.

Memphis-Kansas second half

16:07 – Kaun gets fouled. Three fouls on Joey Dorsey. Not good for Memphis. Dorsey has looked the most excited to be in this game. I’ll miss his over-zealous shouting and bumping at the slightest provocation. 39-38 Kansas.

15:15 – Everyone on the court simultaneously decides that the game should be played by rolling the ball around on the floor for awhile. It’s starting to look like soccer out there. If Hansbrough were on the court tonight, we’d have all the ingredients. Floppers are necessary of course.

13:59 – The score is still 39-38, but there’s a shooting foul so the scoring drought might actually be over. Of course, Memphis is at the line. I can say with confidence that the score will remain 39-38.

11:15 – Billy Packer reminds me of Derrick Rose’s existence. He has five points.

6:19 – Douglas-Roberts gets his third and has a seat. Memphis does have the lead at 51-47, but benching your best player at this point seems rather silly to me. A quick look at his stats this season tells me he hasn’t once fouled out. Why not trust that as a junior he has the presence of mind to keep himself in the game?

4:14 – Jim Nance calls an accidentally banked-in three pointer by Rose the “shot of the tournament.” My initial reaction was to roll my eyes, but now remembering how largely awful the games have been the last couple rounds, I’m wondering if he’s right. Memphis is up 57-49. It’d be nice to have a tight ending to a title game for once, but that dream is slowly slipping away.

3:49 – And the score is now 56-49 Memphis. Almost a half-minute after the shot, the refs rule Rose’s three pointer a two. That’s some sloppy officiating. How does that even happen? When does the statute of limitations run out for reviewing a shot?

2:13 – With over two minutes left in the game and only down seven points, Kansas starts fouling. This may be the last time we ever see such a strategy this early make logical sense in the title game.

1:54 – Packer is asked to announce to the audience what Kansas’s strategy for the rest of the game is. Didn’t Geraldo Rivera get in trouble for that?

1:30 – Nance asks, “Will the dream come true, or will Kansas come back?” I understand C-USA isn’t a premiere conference, but this isn’t exactly the United States hockey team circa 1980.

1:00 – 62-60, Memphis. Wow. This game is actually going to have an exciting ending.

0:16.8 – Memphis misses two free throws, but miraculously gets the ball back. Calipari’s brilliant strategy of not practicing shooting from the charity stripe is paying off. The score remains 62-60.

0:00 – Memphis manages to make a free throw and Kansas's Chalmers answers with an equally unlikely three pointer. This marks the first time that two coaches sold their souls to the Devil during the same game. 63-63, overtime. Wow.

Memphis-Kansas halftime

Commercial note II – Bob Knight appears in a Volkswagen ad. He may not be the world’s greatest actor, but he’s still captivating on screen. At one point Knight gets angry and throws the Ikea-looking piece of furniture he’s sitting on about three feet in front of him. They couldn’t find him something a little lighter? It made his toss look rather wimpy.

10:20 pm – I can’t understand the rumors that Bill Self could potentially leave Kansas. How is it that one of the four or five most storied programs of all time can’t come up with enough money to secure a coach? Roy Williams leaving to go to UNC is one thing, but losing Bill Self would just be embarrassing.

10:23 – Congratulations to Tyler Hansbrough for becoming the second ACC player in the last three years to accept the Naismith Award with a complete and utter lack of enthusiasm after getting bounced from the Tournament earlier than he would have liked. That other player of course is JJ Redick. Look for Hansbrough to have an equally exciting career on the bench.

Memphis-Kansas first half

18:38 (left in the half) – Memphis scores after the ball bounces off an official’s foot, thereby stopping it from careening out of bounds. There are so many obvious jokes I could make about referees and yet I can’t think of any of them and I don’t think anyone really wants to read one anyway.

16:20 – Kansas goes down 9-3… a deficit CBS announces is the Jayhawks’ largest of the tournament. Clearly the game is over.

15:36 – It’s 9-5 at the first timeout. I have high hopes that this game will be better than the abominations that have been the title games from 2004-2007, but my confidence would be boosted by Kansas figuring out how to not mishandle the ball every possession.

15:12 – Kaun may have the ugliest looking alley oops I’ve ever seen. It just doesn’t seem plausible that he can get that high off the ground. This is the second alley oop I’ve seen him make this tournament and while this one was far less goofy looking, I think he’d fit in better if he lost his muscle mass, donned some short-shorts and went back in time to play basketball in the 1970s.

13:21 – Tie game, 11-11. Last decent championship game I remember seeing was 2003. That one had Kansas in it too. Good omen?

8:47 – I’m beginning to suspect that the ball is coated in butter.

8:20 – Brandon Rush to Darrell Arthur for an alley oop that doesn’t look nearly as impossible as Kaun’s… by which I mean Arthur didn’t appear to need the help of wires to lift him from the ground. 22-15 in favor of Kansas for Memphis’s biggest deficit of the tournament.

Commercial note – It’s disappointing to see the same old ads I see all the time on TV. I know this isn’t the Super Bowl, but I still feel like it’s an event that deserves something new in the way of corporate sponsorship. That’s likely to be the toughest stance I take all game long. I’m known for my gritty analysis.

7:25 – Oh! Look at that! Roy Williams is in the stands. He’s wearing a very forced smile. I wonder why…

6:20 – Memphis back in front 26-24. I honestly don’t even know how that happened. Perhaps Williams has re-assumed control of the team.

4:46 – Douglas-Roberts has 13. There must be someone out there wondering why CBS has combined their point totals.

1:43 – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many big men hustle in one game. I thought what I learned from watching Duke’s Brian Zoubek all season long is that big men are supposed to stand in the lane and then deposit the ball out of bounds repeatedly before they’re removed from the game after 30 seconds of playing time. Coach K should maybe look into Kansas’s strategy…

0:00.1 – Memphis determines that taking a shot with the final possession really isn’t worth the effort. The score at halftime: 33-28 Kansas.

Memphis-Kansas pre-game

9:10 pm – Brandon Rush has apparently only made it to the line nine times during the NCAA Tournament. That still compares favorably with the estimated nine free throws Memphis made all regular season long. Advantage: Kansas.

9:15 – Bill Self tells his kids that they have nothing to lose. This year’s Kansas team has won the most games of any Kansas team in history, so says Self. Of course, this year’s Memphis team has won the most of games of any team in history. Advantage: Memphis (though Memphis did play a mid-major schedule…)

I might also mention that Self’s pep-talk was maybe one of the least inspiring that I’ve ever seen. His players looked visibly bored and I swear someone attempted to cue the rest of the team that it should soon pretend to be excited by clapping prematurely before the end of Self’s speech.

9:20 – “Sleek! Fast! Unorthodox!” says the announcer about the Tigers before the players are named. It kind of sounds like they ran out of things to say about them.

Do I understand what a blog entails?

I received a call from Christine Brennan about my last post and needless to say, she disagreed with some of the things I wrote.

I'm working on a follow-up, but I thought I'd at least acknowledge the fact that she thinks I may have misrepresented her in a few places. There was some exaggeration, but I think that was in the interest of humor.

Hopefully I'll have a bit more to add here within the week and I'll try to get across what I think her objections were.

Do you understand what your job entails?

Christine Brennan of USA Today made an appearance at my sports journalism class the other day.

Did you know she gave Tony Kornheiser the ideas for many of his columns back when he actually still wrote for The Washington Post and she's great friends with all the important TV people? Did you know that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig once called her up out of the blue and she gave him a piece of her mind because she's one tough hombre, but he still really liked her book even though she was tough on him? Did you know that she is the reason every exciting or interesting sports story you've ever read got published?

So she's got a bit of an ego. Oh well. So smugness has taken up permanent residence on her face in the form of a cocky half smile and every single one of her sentences involves a namedrop of some sort. C'est la vie. It's her life to live.

If she's doing her job well, I suppose complete self-satisfaction is tolerable.

But she isn't doing her job. And she admitted it to our class.

Today's columnists and news bloggers have a responsibility to interact with their audience. It's part of Internet journalism. That doesn't mean you have to respond to each idiotic response, but you owe it to your readers to take their thoughts into consideration. It's a dialogue of sorts and what better way to get a sense of what the general public is thinking than by reading reactions to your opinion? That should really give you more material to work with and a better understanding of what would make your articles more relevant.

I was shocked when Christine Brennan told us that she doesn't read the comments posted on her column. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium she works in.

I'm not completely talking out of my ass here. I've never been a prominent columnist in a national newspaper, but I know how this commenting business works. I spent two years sifting through comments sent into our high school online paper. Some of those comments were on articles I'd written, so I'd argue that I've been in a similar position to her own before.

Yes, there are a lot of stupid people out there on the Internet, but when you're posting somewhere millions of people have the potential to read what you've written, you have to expect some of those stupid people to say obnoxious things about your piece. Oh well. Deal with it. It comes with the job.

And who knows? Someone out there might actually have something intelligent to say or might have some information you can use to help further your investigation into the subject.

Brennan wasn't the first person I'd heard recently express an unwillingness to engage with the readership. I asked one of The Washington Post bloggers (hint: not Dan Steinberg) what he thought of the comments he received. He had much the same response, albeit he was far less obnoxious about it and didn't seem as contemptuous.

Still, it makes me wonder what percentage of journalists out there get it. Part of journalism must surely be having a thick skin and part of new media journalism must surely be finding a way to have a manageable conversation with readers.

My high school newspaper adviser John Mathwin understood this and he was by no means a man of cyberspace. To him, acknowledging the people sitting at the other end of the Internet tubes was just common sense. But if my incredibly tiny sample size is any indication, apparently it's something that needs to be taught.

A lot of media organizations seem like they're so close to getting it right. There are a lot of interactive features out there. They just need to hire the right people to carry them out.

From the vault II

And now, because I can't think of anything compelling to write about, I will reach back into the mists of time and retrieve an item from a folder -- a folder known to most only as My Documents.

This time I give you a masterpiece dated April 27, 2005, although the date modified time stamp tells me it was last edited at 7:55 AM on April 28... 35 minutes before it was due. From freshman year of college:

"The way in which a movie is edited is key to how it is understood. With some movies, the editing is thoroughly thought out in order to advance the plot in a very specific way. The Conversation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is one such movie. The film’s use of temporal relations helps create suspense, confusion and a sense of mystery."

Note the masterful way in which I expanded my word count by adding useless words like "in which." Consider my choice to write a list when one word could easily have summed up the thought. Take a moment to reflect on my scholarly assertion that some movies use editing for a reason.

I imagine the single most important factor in choosing to write my essay on The Conversation was the fact that Francis Ford Coppola goes by three names. That's one more name than most other directors. That's one less word I had to put thought into during my efforts to reach the minimum word requirement.

This has been From the Vault. Join me next week when I mull over "Poverty Reaction Paper 3.doc."

American University is going dancing

I stormed a court today.

It was the single greatest moment of my sports-fan career.

Go AU.

Coppin State vs. Hampton: live blog

I've decided to live-blog the last four seconds of the Coppin State-Hampton game based entirely off what I'm seeing on ESPN.com's score updates.

Update 1:
Coppin State hits a free throw to go up one with another shot on the way! KC is excited! (Coppin State 75, Hampton 74)

Update 2:
Coppin State misses the second free throw! KC is worried! (Coppin State 75, Hampton 74)

Update 3:
Something happens! (Coppin State 75, Hampton 74)

Update 4:
Coppin State wins! (Coppin State 75, Hampton 74)

Boring basketball post

I'm behind in writing in this thing. I've meant to add something every day. Somehow I haven't had time. I still have to write about my experience walking through the rain on Friday, but I'm too tired to go into detail about that right now. I think the story that follows is worth reading about, but I feel like I'm about to fall asleep so I'm not sure if any of the words after this make any sense. I used the word "but" in two sentences in a row. I feel like that's bad writing, but I don't care.

Here is something important you need to know: American University basketball is amazing and we're going to the NCAA Tourney. It's going to happen. I have decreed it so.

We knocked off Army today, but at a bit of a price. One of our better players looks like he might be done for the season. Color me embarrassed because I had no idea who the guy was who came in for him.

At half time, I was talking to a Washington Post blogger I read and met once before. Occasionally I'll shoot him an email. When we were talking he asked why I'd never mentioned that someone related to Nick Hendra had been involved in This Is Spinal Tap. "I don't know who Nick Hendra is," I said.

He told me Hendra played for our team. Oops.

As fate would have it, Hendra actually got some playing time in the second half after the injury and he was pretty big in securing the win. He's apparently one of the best recruits we've ever signed, but for some reason Jeff Jones, in his infinite wisdom, decided he deserved no playing time this year.

Hendra threw down what I can only describe as an amazing slam dunk because I'm too tired to think of other, more descriptive and flowery words. Anyway, he kicks ass, and that's all I have to say about that.

I was immensely impressed by the turnout today. I'm almost jealous that we're no longer the super fans. Everyone has stepped up their fanhood to match us. And by "us" I mean probably myself and one other guy who consistently went to games this year before it was clear we were going to be tops in the conference. Then of course there's the track team. They've easily supplanted us at this point.

Oh well, I just want to storm the court on Friday.

This post is awful. Go ahead and skip reading it.

Addendum: If anyone has any idea where I can buy an American University jersey, please let me know.

Bustin' makes me feeeel good

I wasn't at all with it when I was walking to class yesterday. I'd pulled an all-nighter and something had come loose in my head.

I had a feeling my brain was in the process of overwriting the previous day's morning because sleep hadn't provided any separation between the dates. My brain sacrificed the shields for more power in the engine room and it just couldn't register the repetition. I didn't get a warning asking me if I wanted to save under a different filename. The Morning of March 4, 2008 is gone. How sad.

It's weird brushing your teeth when an entire night has completely disappeared. For me, embracing a new day isn't possible in this scenario.

At any rate, during the walk, the Ghostbusters theme song popped up on my iPod. This is a song I will generally skip. It has a five-star rating that I generously bestowed upon it, but I'm never in the mood to listen to the whole thing because it's not one of those songs that makes me feel hip and cool.

This time I let it play. I was too out of whack to respond to my normal objections. Still, other primary brain functions were operating normally. Specifically the brain functions that cause me to walk to the beat involuntarily like a complete moron.

I haven't determined how to turn this off, but other, more self-aware parts of my brain valiantly do battle to combat the issue. The result is a halting gait that I'm sure makes it appear as though my legs are fighting to stay on the ground due to a lack of gravity below my waist.

When "Ghostbusters" made its way to my ears, I knew I was in trouble. I pictured the closing credits to the cartoon. You know, the part where they're all dancing down the street and for some reason there's confetti all over the place and a huge crowd is cheering them on.

My knees began to wobble. I leaned back a little bit. My arms bent at the elbows. I had the sudden urge to snap. My butt might have even partaken in a bit of a shimmy.

I regained composure for the most part, but I can't be certain I didn't have occasional leg convulsions accompanied by fist pumping making it look like I was approximating a stereotypical Russian dance as performed by a Chris Tucker impersonator.

I had to suppress the urge to burst out into laughter at least six times. I ended up grinning like an idiot or I guess like the ghost in the opening credits, not that this is unusual for me.

When the song ended, a Green Day song attempted to take over. "Doooo you have the time...?" Billie Joe Armstrong began to ask me. "No," I responded almost out-loud and hit the back button so I could hear "Ghostbusters" again.

------------------------------------

For your reference and personal edification:

Opening


Closing

I can only hope I looked like an amalgamation of the two.

American where at least the tickets are free

I may or may not have had something to do with The Washington Post getting its hands on this:

Crucify Holy Cross: AU's Cheer Sheet

If we somehow manage to lose tonight, I will fully accept all of the blame both because I leaked the cheer sheet and because I won't be able to make it to the game (but how was I supposed to pass up press passes to the Wizards game and a chance to meet one of the players?!).

From the vault

I now bring you the unedited text of a document I recently unearthed from 2005:

"Innocent until proven guilty."
"You make it sound like a forgone conclusion."
"That's the saying, Jack."
"Innocent unless proven guilty. Our justice system should really take a look into adopting that saying."

By kc

Bravo, "kc." Bravo. This is some pretty awesomely hokey dialogue.

Part of me is embarrassed to have written this. Firstly (what a terrible word) because I'm sure a bunch of other idiots have come up with the same thing thinking they were really clever, and secondly because there is no story to go with it. It's just a bit of dialogue I apparently thought was cool. I'm not sure this is the kind of thing you can flesh out into a screenplay...

There's another part of me that cautiously supports what I wrote. I guess this is pretty normal trepidation for a writer. Sometimes you can't convince yourself something you've written is crap until someone else tells you it is.* And why should I feel stupid that other people have written the same thing? I'm pretty sure I came up with it independently.

"By kc." That seems to assert pretty clearly that this is my intellectual property. Still, looking back at the lowercase letters of my name makes me wonder if I'm betraying some kind of doubt that this is original work.

Hopefully it's just a personal flourish I've forgotten about.

*Sum of "somes" in that sentence: 3.

Volcano!

Stanley and Ted stood atop a massive volcano. Having spent the better part of an afternoon climbing, there they were, staring into a fiery pit.

"I say Stanley," said Ted, "are you quite sure this volcano is safe?"

"Not at all," replied Stanley.

"I see," said Ted. "But we're quite sure this volcano isn't scheduled to erupt?"

"Oh no," replied Stanley.

"Well, that's a relief," said Ted.

"Oh, no," replied Stanley. "I meant, 'Oh no' in the sense that I'm not sure."

"I see," said Ted. "I would assume the chances of eruption are quite small."

"I should think so," replied Stanley. "This particular volcano erupts but once a week."

"Stanley," said Ted, "you know it irritates me a great deal that you didn't investigate this more thoroughly. In fact, I'd say I'm downright enraged."

And then, as if to signify Ted's rage metaphorically, the volcano erupted.

Leap Day

It's Leap Day.

This article reminded me.

I'm not going to get the chance to write an entry on the day after February 28 that isn't in March for a long time. I might forget to do it in the future and I'll regret having missed my chance.

So here it is. My Leap Day Post.





And that was my Leap Day Post. I'll see you in 4 years, 2/29!

Addendum: I was publishing my posts in Pacific Standard Time! This post briefly appeared as though it had been written on the 28th. I assure you that is not the case!

Ol' Whatshisname

RUSSERT
So my question is this - what do you think of that new dude in Russia?

Obama and Clinton look at each other. Oh fuck.

CLINTON
He's a total dick and if I were president, I'd kick his ass.

RUSSERT
Ok, whatever. I don't actually care. I just want to hear you say his name.

CLINTON
Uh, Ahmadinejad?

RUSSERT
Ahahahahaha!

This time around, I will use titles

The migration is complete!

I've found a new home for writing publicly on the Internet!

For those of you who don't know me, let me introduce myself: I'm the man.

I think you take my meaning. Few are lucky enough to receive such a title. I hate to brag, but I've been notified that I'm the man on multiple occasions.

Yeah. That's right. I'm bad and I don't care who knows it.

I really don't. In fact, you should tell everyone you know. That would really boost my self esteem.

Thanks.