The Madness: Part 1.2

The kiddoes have their own ways of dealing with the madness.

The Madness: Part 1

The most memorable opening days of March Madness occurred about 14 years ago. Due to an accident I had, falling into my apartment's stair well (long story), I was laid up for a long weekend with contusions. On the first day of the injury, I was to remain awake in order to ward off any possible concussion after-effects. Luckily, this fell on the opening of the national championship tournament. To date, this was the only time I've ever seen all of the televised games of the opening round.

You know you're a tournament junkie when the manager of your favorite watering hole has your father-in-law call you 30 minutes before tip-off to ensure you've gotten your bracket in.

My Wine Cellar Bracket:


















I'm also 12 for 16 for Thursday's games in the bracket above. For clarification, my wins are highlighted, my losses are stricken through with the actual winners circled. The strike-throughs in the sweet 16 and beyond are last minute changes I made before submitting the bracket. I'm two games better in my Yahoo Bracket.

March Madness

I'll be submitting one of my brackets at the Wine Cellar and a second bracket on Yahoo. There is no "Sheet of Integrity" as both have different outcomes. I figure I can double my chances. What the heck.

On a related note, Christian Laettner just admitted on the Dan Patrick Show that he'd likely pee in a bottle, instead of stopping at a gas station if he had to drive through the state of Kentucky. He was joking, of course, but there are still probably folks around who wouldn't help him if his car broke down. I'll admit that his shot capped off the greatest game in NCAA tournament history. Still, he acted like a punk-ass-bitch when he stomped on the chest of one of Kentucky's players in that game.

Since the "shot heard 'round the world" is played ad-nauseum at this time of the year, I'll leave you with a reenactment:



Here's a bit of video from the game. A moment I'd forgotten about. Watch the fine acting by Duke's player in this tangle:

Patty's Pot On All Y'all

The Galoots have survived yet another jam-packed weekend. I don't think we've ever been this active between January and April since moving to Western New York. A recap:

Friday saw the kiddoes and I heading up to PGirl's place of work. The three of them went to a youth series show called "The Gizmo Guys" while I joined The Unexpected Guests for Improvathon 2008 - basically 5 improv troupes performing a set each then joining for a "mixer" at the end of the night. Milton F. Hunter zinged a few audience members in "Good, Bad, Worse Advice" while Mr. Social poignantly became a punching/kicking bag, playing our disgraced governor in "Naive Replay". Jane brought the house down with a revelation of two sets of mommy parts in the final lyrics of "Way Off Broadway". A good time was had by all.

Saturday was mostly spent preparing for our St. Patrick's Day get-together, with some detours to swim class and ballet class. Galoot Jr. is taking to the pool like a fish out of H20. It was parent observation day at the ballet and PGirlJr. has some serious dancing chops. I couldn't be prouder. The St. Patrick's Day feast was bigger than we'd originally thought. Almost 30 folks showed up between 5:30 and 11:30pm. We went through:

• 11 pounds of corned beef brisket
• 2 shepherd's pie casseroles
• 1 pot of Guiness stew

Much Guinness was consumed as well as several "Dirty Girl Scouts", which are mixed drinks, not filthy female troop members. Only one dart game was played in the back room, but we made it more fun by keeping score on PGirlJr.'s pink Magnadoodle.

Sunday was catch up day. We slowly cleaned around the house after a Sunday school presentation of the stations of the cross. PGirl can write more about that production. Selection Sunday saw few surprises. Looks like Kentucky will play a 3 seed on Thursday. Also, I've begun watching reruns of Showtime's "Dexter" on CBS. Funny, funky, scary show. I know some people are miffed that some of the gore and language have been cut or dubbed for network TV, but I'd imagine those same folks would admit it is character and story that bring them back. I'm just saying...

On This Day In History

Preppy Girl has a fairly accurate account of what went down between us that set up our first date 10 years ago.

I can tell you we've also been through:

• One presidential impeachment.
• One horrific attack on New York City.
• Elian Gonzalez's brief stay in the United States.
• Encounters with Richard Simmons and Scut Farkas.
• About one thousand arguments (the last one was about answering telephones).
• A decade long journey to get to a fairly comfortable place in our life together.

On March 12, 1998, PGirl came down to the production office where we worked to meet up with me for our date. In tow, was our future neighbor Sylvia (I thought she'd been brought along as insurance of some sort) who soon excused herself. I was probably wearing blue jeans and an oxford shirt. She was wearing a short, black skirt and a multi-paneled, short sleeved sweater (the pattern reminded me of the Partridge Family bus, and she had one with blue and another in green).

We walked to our destination, Dicey Riley's, an honest to goodness Irish pub in Fort Lauderdale. We drank, we smoked and we talked for a few hours. We shared divorce stories from our families and discovered that her father and my stepfather had grown up twenty miles from each other. I'd even traveled within miles of her hometown when I was a teen (we might have seen one another at the mall).

Two long years had passed since my last serious relationship had ended and my bastard period went into effect. Was I looking for the one? Sure. But there was no pressure with PGirl (from her or myself). Things just went easy from the first date. We kissed in the parking lot and parted ways. Within a few days we went from a first drink, to lap-sitting on the second date to meeting my future mother-in-law by date 3 (on St. Patrick's Day). By December we were shacking up and by the following August, we were engaged. We moved fast, but it was the right kind of speed. It was right.

It still is.

You make me a better person every day.

Trifecta!

The Kids In The Hall will be touring for a third time this decade beginning in April. I'm hoping to catch their performance in Cleveland on May 31 with the wife (if St. Eileen is reading this, please know that I'll be on my knees, begging you and the Organ Grinder to watch the kids for the evening!)

You don't have to be familiar with their work to enjoy these guys. Apparently, the sketches will be all new, but feature some recurring characters from their television show. If you haven't had the pleasure, below are links to my favorite KITH bits:

Chicken Lady At A Strip Club

Buddy Cole Coaches Softball

Two Clearly Insane Sisters

King of Empty Promises

Secretaries Talking About The New Temp

The Dream

Spitzer Take

Our beloved, bulldog of a governor - the guy who told record companies that payola wasn't going to fly any more - may be leaving office. Elliott Spitzer seems to have illegally gotten some nookie to cross state lines for his pleasure. Maybe he and the young lady just got naked and talked. Whatever happened was bad enough for the dude to apologize for it publicly and hunker down with his closest advisors in NYC to figure out what to do next.

My guess is he'll resign. Not because of some partisan threat of impeachment (the 48 hour demand to step down is laughable posturing). No, I believe he'll resign because he likely committed one of the very crimes he built his career on prosecuting. If he gets boneheaded, and refuses to resign, then impeach the doofus.

The guy clearly messed up royally and should pay for it. I hope Spitzer will take the high road and do this because it is the right thing to do. I can't imagine that he'll do it the "Washington Way" and change the rules so he can legally fuck people.

Snow Day Like Today

The nasty snow that walloped Ohio hit us with its eastern edge from Friday through early this morning, leaving almost a foot of the white stuff. We lucked out, as PGirlJr’s ballet and religious education classes were cancelled. The extra time was used to clean the floors and kitchen (in preparation for our St. Patrick’s party next weekend), do laundry, watch television and eat off-schedule. As the first dusk of daylight savings time approached, we headed out to a park on the south side to take the kids sledding.

PGirl and I are awful parents, because this is the first time we’ve taken the kids for some honest-to-goodness, hill-shredding sledding. Some things we learned today:

1. There is no simpler way to glide down a finely packed hill than on a molded piece of plastic. We took the Hudsucker route and chose roundly (“You know, for kids!”).
2. My son has no fear. He proved this as he not only climbed up some park steps with his disc in tow, but also promptly turned around at the top and sledded down them.
3. The more weight you have, the longer you’ll travel. We Galoots performed two tandem runs by linking to each other through a tangle of limbs and the grabbed edges of our cheap plastic vehicles. We must have looked like one of those Japanese cartoon teams, whose members operate individual vehicles which combine to form bigger vehicles or robot warriors.
4. Texas Hots taste real good after sledding.

Marathon Man

The past week was a lot busier than it initially seemed. At work, I was sprinting to finish an online newsletter by Friday's end. Additionally, I spent a few hours, here and there, helping to set up for the ballet's fundraising ball. I accomplished all I set out to do, but the work is catching up to me. First of all, my eyes feel like they are bugging out of my head. Daddy needs some sleep. Secondly, I fell on some stairs at the ball venue. I was sore at first, but now I'm aching in my back a bit.

The ball was a modest success, raising over $3,000 for the ballet in a live and silent auction. PGirl and I were dressed up in formal duds. She wore a short, black cocktail dress with silver embroidery. I wore a tuxedo I bought at Value City a few weeks ago. Luckily, most of it was a good fit, though I had to have the jacket taken in. A Sicilian tailor on the south side of town did a bang-up job on it!

Since hitting the hay at 2 in the morning, I've been enjoying two marathons that have been playing on the satellite.

• "Jackass 24 Hour Takeover" - This was live last weekend and aired again on MTV2 for the past day. I love "Jackass". It is a goofy damn delight. Always nice to see other people screw around and have fun.
• "Little People, Big World" - I've never followed this one religously, but usually sit down to watch it. I don't know what draws me to it, but I suppose it might be because the show doesn't stress me out. PGirlJr. likes it too. The father, Mark Roloff, drives me nuts because he seems to push so much on his family. But he's a good guy. At least the kids are learning to be resourceful.