Things Macho Men Should Know About

1. Some night when the mood strikes me to revert to my inner silver-back gorilla and declare my dominance over all other males in my territory, I will make this. Chances are it will happen during college football season.

2. Some crazy asshole connoisseur had the bright idea to create a bourbon butter cocktail. Said crazy asshole was not me. I wish I could take credit, though.

   Basil Hayden's Bourbon Holiday Cocktails Created by wd`50 Restaurant, New York

   http://www.bourbonblog.com/blog/2010/11/24/basil-haydens-bourbon-holiday-cocktails-wd-50-restaurant-new-york/

   
   



3. Barrel-Aged Cocktails: These Are A Thing Now

   http://sanfrancisco.grubstreet.com/2010/10/the_next_trend_in_cocktail_gee.html Once upon a time there were that were drunk. These drunk people had some idea about how aging liquor in barrels made the liquor taste better. "Hey," said Drunk Number One, "I have some liquor that would taste better if we aged it!" "Oh yeah," asked Drunk Number Two, "what liquor do you have?" Drunk Number One responded, "My gin cocktail!" And so people began aging cocktails in barrels and declaring that it was good.

Dance Yrself Clean - LCD Soundsystem - Muppets rock out in Brighton !

Jamie Dixon LOVES his new peanut butter chapstick!

Behind Enemy Lines: Louisville AT Rutgers

7:20 PM - Tuesday, February 22nd

So I'm Rutgers' campus an hour before the game and I have no idea where I'm walking to. So far I'm just following about 20 paces behind a young girl that looks like she's basketball bound...

8:20 PM

Bought a $35 ticket. My seat isn't terrible, but I suspect I'd be better off scalping a ticket next time. If I had any semblance of where I was and who I was giving money to. The RAC is really an old school gym, and its kind of small.

I don't see Pitino or Swopshire, but I see all the other familiar faces.

All the Rutgers fans were patient and polite directing me to my seat. Opted to not wear my UofL gear. Don't think results would have been much different, though.

I got a free Rutgers foam finger. Novelty freebie acquired!

So far so good.

10:00 PM

First half wrap-up:

There was only one point at which this crowd was loud and in support of their team. That was during the opening minute. Since then the only time they've been loud was in groaning when the Rutgers team turned over the ball (this happened often). The fans groaning was almost as loud as their cheering.

I don't understand why Rakeem Buckles is starting for Louisville. Since coming back from his injury, he has contributed negatively to this team. It really seems like the game goes 4-on-5, or even 4-on-6 depending on how many turnovers Buckles contributes. I get Pitino trying to get him back to pre-injury shape, but he has a lot more faith in the young man than I do.

The student section contributes to the majority of the noise generated here in the RAC. And they get it loud quickly. Unfortunately for them, they don't stay consistently engaged. To that point, the entire student section was about as mature and engaged as you would expect of New Jersey fans of a basketball team with a losing record. The opening taunt was to shout "SUCKS!" after each UofL starter's name was announced. The only other taunt they got going was to shout "YOU ARE UGLY" at Chris Smith whenever he went to shoot foul shots. I don't know how or why they settled on him to be their target. He's from NYC. Maybe there's a connection there. The student section itself was about as big as UofL's at home (which speaks to how poorly the Louisville students are regarded), which is about twice as big as Shelby County High School's student section. But, credit where credit is due, whether it was because of the low ceiling or the small capacity of the gym, the student section was able to make a lot of noise on both occasions.

The fans made noise two other times during the game. Once in the second half when Rutgers was making a run. The other time was when Preston Knowles missed a free throw. They actually cheered "Yay!" Not "yeah" or "awesome." "Yay," like a little girl. It made me chuckle.

I hinted at it earlier, but the crowd made more noise groaning or complaining about their team's play than they did cheering or taunting. People were booing in the first half when foul shots were missed. That never bodes well. And the one heckler I heard all night started within the first 6 minutes of gameplay, and 90% of his heckles were against Rutgers. This guy was a real piece of work. The other 10% of his heckles were 1% in the last 5 minutes of gameplay against Pitino ("where's your girlfriend?") and 9% heckles against the Special Olympics youth basketball team that played at halftime ("Dunk it, retard!" / "I thought this was basketball, not kickball!" / "Traveling!" / "Shoot the three!"). I think it might be the most disgusting, most distasteful thing I've ever witnessed at a sporting event: heckling Special Olympics players. He also shouted lewd things at the dance team. Class act. What was comforting was that he was making everyone in attendance grimmace, and I feel confident in saying that not all Rutgers fans were like him. In fact, he stood alone. The Rutgers fans were, for the most part, very tasteful.

A Tale of Two College Gamedays

I'm having a problem with the ESPN college basketball announcers this year. I actually enjoy Bob Knight, but not as the color commentator. He has an extremely dry sense of humor, but he's not outrageous. He actually usually sticks with X's and O's, and that's ok with me.

The entire program has taken on a silly atmosphere that is uncharacteristic for the talent, and it does not play to their talents. This is the clip that really ruined it for me this year.

Jay Bilas' talent comes from being cerebral and smart and 95% without BS. His strength as a commentator has always been his strait-to-the-point, relatively-unbiased presentation of a basketball game. Someone got in his ear and told him to be more like a clown. "Be more like Dick Vitale." But that is the opposite of who Jay Bilas should be. He should be the guy that deconstructs the Dick Vitales and the Digger Phelpses of ESPN, because when he does it is a thing of beauty. When he tries to be funny, its like watching a tone deaf ugly girl try to impress people. You kind of feel bad, but at the same time a little pissed off.

Digger is garbage. He's a color commentator that is way too liberal with the color, and none of his colors are coordinated (unlike his tie and highlighter...oh what an outrageous, fun tradition!)(sarcasm).

And College Gameday is trying something I've not seen before for basketball, and I think its a change for the worse. In the past, Jay Bilas has been really entertaining at researching scouting reports and being the brains of the show and usually whatever game he's calling. He's been a great strait man. Occasionally, when paired with a veteran announcer, he took the color commentary roll, and it was great, because it wasn't that colorful. If you paired Bilas with a veteran announcer it was perfect. A mix that worked well without being biased, like Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit (the ABC Saturday night College game of the night).

Hubert Davis has been a decent host of College Gameday, half-color commentator, half-strait man.

And Rece Davis used to be the Chris Fowler of the show. A strait man with a resonating voice that anchored everything back to reality. But the Davis boys are starting to let the show get away from them. Digger is the idiotic color commentator. Rece and Hubert should be more anchored. Don't join his ranks. Don't go down that path, please.

But something is changing within the show. It seems like a producer asked them to emulate the success of College Gameday for football. Now all four of the guys are always cutting up. I can entertain some Lee Corso - Digger Phelps comparisons, but its a stretch. On college Gameday for football, the other four hosts look at Lee like he's crazy 30% of the time, but the other 70% they're paying attention to what he has to say. There's a sense of reverence for Lee Corso. Yes, he has goofy habits like "NOT SO FAST!" and putting on a mascot's head, but at least he's not talking with a huge bias like Lou Holtz (is it a coincidence that ESPN recruits aged Notre Dame coaches to be color commentators?). On Gameday for Basketball, nobody really takes Digger seriously.

The poor guy just can't wrap his head around modernity. Everything in his basketball IQ is at least two decades old. When Louisville was down by 3 to Georgetown, he couldn't understand why more coaches don't have their players heave the ball past half-court for a catch-and-shoot like Christian Laettner in 1992 (19 years ago) in the infamous Duke/UK game NCAA tournament regional game. "Why more coaches don't call that play is beyond me!" Its beyond you because it is not a wildly successful play. First, before you ask why no coach has called one of your favorite plays, take a moment to consider why they wouldn't call that play. Could it be because that was a miracle shot that wasn't successful before or after Laettner pulled it off? That would be the logical conclusion: it is not a high-percentage scoring opportunity. You would think that as an ex-coach, you would know what plays are safe, and which plays are wildly retarded (or....not). Also, as a supposed "expert" commentator, you should never admit that anything is "beyond you." EVERYTHING should be within your grasp. You're an expert. You can say you disagree with a play. That's cool.

Hubert Davis in the past has been a very comparable performer to Desmond Howard. They both cut up more than they should. They can both pull off the knowledgeable athlete that hasn't been away from the game for too long. But a couple weekends ago, when talking about Roy Williams popping off at callers on his radio show, Hubert Davis actually refused to talk about the subject. When posed with the question, he asked "Why are we even talking about this?" and stomped his feet and wouldn't comment further. Look, the producers and writers of the show come up with topics that they want their performers to comment on. He tried to flip the game on what was an otherwise interesting question. And when Rece, Jay, or Digger started to comment, he would butt in asking why they felt the need to comment. He was acting like a spoiled little kid. Desmond Howard at least recognizes a) where his paycheck comes from and b) how to engage in conversation even if he doesn't enjoy where someone's opinion comes from.

Jay Bilas is being changed, and that's a bad thing. Rece Davis is being changed, and that's a bad thing, too. Rece Davis now encourages the rest of the crew to say batshit nutty things. He tries to bring out the goofy in Jay Bilas, and Jay Bilas goofy is not entertaining. Where Chris Fowler anchors the show with occasional, subtle goading, Rece Davis brings up Digger's dance way too often. He tries to get Jay Bilas to fake barf into a trashcan. He wants to bring out the nasty, ultra-red-state out of Bobby Knight. And I have to assume someone behind the scenes is asking him to make this stretch. Rece Davis shouldn't be an active member of the color commentary. He should be the host. He should be a non-objective participant, like the narrator of a play. It doesn't suit him to act like a teenaged kid trying to start shit. He's "the voice," both the voice of reason and the golden voice. He shouldn't be the voice of your obnoxious step brother that's 3 months younger than you, but 6 inches taller, and always starting crap.

The environment on College Gameday for football obviously is the model that ESPN is going after for College Gameday for basketball. But things need to be tweaked. The performers can do it, but its like they're being pushed way too hard. Part of me feels bad for them, and the other part of me wishes the crew on the Big Ten Network could take over national basketball operations, because they balance their color and their strait very well.

If ESPN had any sense, they'd get Gus Johnson as their premier color commentator. That's a guy that can get excited for any team without losing himself in bias. The guy is both smart and exciting. And the strait commentators they pair him with always compliment him well. Gus Johnson is the Worcestershire sauce of commentators.

Learning to Cope With Weather in the Northeast Pt 2

NOTE: I wrote this, drunkenly, last week when I was having a rough night.

Between the time the UofL game ended and now another 4 inches of snow fell, and it looks like its not going to stop any time soon.

Stupidly, I made a cup of coffee....Irish coffee as a cocktail while the guys played Starcraft tonight. I think its keeping me up. I'm not tired at all.

So, being starkly awake and watching the snow, and wondering if I'm going to be able to drive tomorrow I had the realization that snow would make good cocktails. So I have been walking to my back steps and gathering snow, handfulls at a time, and making bourbon cocktails out of it. So far the snowy old fashioneds have been delicious.

If I'm not able to get out tomorrow, I will have lost 2 days this week to snow. And I don't know if I'll be able to get stuff done like I got stuff done today. I have almost exhausted my office work. I might do my taxes. I might just sit and watch movies/play video games all day.

I have plenty of food. Plenty of bread. Plenty of bourbon. I'm running low on milk, and I ran out cereal today, but that's ok. I have plenty of breakfast supplies. The only thing I really need milk for is more Irish coffee or if I make cookies, and I don't think I'll be doing either between now and Friday.

For what its worth, snow makes for really fun cocktails. You make a cocktail like normal, but instead of ice you use a couple handfulls of snow. The snow half-way melts and makes a better slushy that you'd ever get out of an actual slushy machine or a blender.




The next day I had this update

I lost track of how many snow bourbons I had last night. I am hung over this morning.
I'm declaring another office day.
Or maybe just a sick day.
I love my job.

I made cocktails and then dipped snowballs into the glass. The snow dissolved and made more of a slushy than anything else. It was delicious and....unfortunately...numerous.

Learning to Cope With Weather in the Northeast

The wintry tundra storm has missed my part of NJ for the most part. There hasn't been much snow accumulation at all, but we do have a thick shell of ice on top of everything. Last night I was walking the trash to the dumpster, and it literally felt like I was walking on eggshells. And this morning it was sleeting and blowing against my bedroom windows. I woke up, and it sounded oddly like I was in an aquarium.

Its always a weird way to start the day when you wake up without your glasses on thinking you're in an aquarium.

I understand Kentucky is getting a lot of rain? That's nasty.

Allentown, Pennsylvania got a lot of ice, too, and very little snow. This is only relevant to me because I'm flying out of there on Friday. Correction: I'm supposed to be flying out of there on Friday morning. Right now all of their Wednesday flights are canceled, but Thursday and Friday flights look unaffected.

I have a plan, though, if my flight gets canceled and I can't make it to Florida for my birthday.

The snow plows that scrape the apartment complex's parking lot always push the snow to one end of the lot. All of the kids that live in the complex climb this huge snow hill and sled down it. I was looking at it last night after thinking how much more fun it would be if the kids didn't have to slip and fall every time they tried to climb it. So if I'm stuck in New Jersey on Saturday, I'm going to take some tools and carve steps into the snow/ice so the kids can climb it easier. Then I will spend the rest of the day drinking and listening to the laughter.

Another obnoxious thing about the weather and my job.

On a regular day of sales calls, I never have to be on the road before 10. And if the weather's bad, that is an impetus for me to hit the road even later, because usually the bad weather clears as the morning changes into afternoon. If its icy or snowy, by noon the roads are all clear and drivers aren't puttering around quite as slow.

But for anyone with a job that requires them to be in by 8 or 9, its a different story. Because there's snow/ice/snice on their cars, they get up even earlier in the event of bad weather so they can scrape their cars, shovel their steps, and cause lots of noise. And because they're in New Jersey, and the thing to do here is not have an inside voice, the people yell from their cars to their children or their partners.

"BEN! GET IN THE CAR! THE CAR IS WARM! I SCRAPED THE WINDHSIELD! HURRY UP!"

So what should mean extra sleep time for Paul actually means earlier wake up time, usually to a sound that wakes me out of a dream and sends me into a weird panic. "What's that grinding sound?! Why are people yelling?! Where am I?! Why can't I see?!"

The answers are: shoveling/scraping, people don't have inside voices, New Jersey, I'm not wearing my glasses.

The bonerface that plows my apartment complex's parking lot did this to my car last week: