so I think I figured out why I don't like it when I hear songs in commercials - it's not because they "sold out" or whatever, but when I hear that song again, it reminds me of the product. I guess that's the idea, but when I hear a song I like, I don't want to think of M&Ms or Hondas or Outback Steakhouse or whatever, I want to think of whatever memories I have with the song, or whatever the song is about. Especially "Baby Got Back" and Lil Kim songs.

In other news, I found a pretty neat site listing celebrities' political donations. It has tons of people. Most give to Democrats, like P. Diddy, who gave money to Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, while all the country music people, game show hosts (Pat Sajak, Wink Martindale, Bob Barker, Art Linkletter, even Trebek) and wrestlers are 100% Republican. And Prince, too.

Also, there is a guy named Peter Bonerz. Haha.

so I was flipping channels today and saw these two bizarre looking basketball teams playing. It turns out it was the Wizards and Bulls in some terrible looking throw-back jerseys, like really just ugly. The Wizards one is from the 70s, and looks like costume for one of the bad guy's minions in a James Bond movie, while the Bulls look like some kind of weird pajamas, or some kind of lame 1950's Harlem Globetrotters unis. I don't know if the Bulls are really bad or the unis just make them look like terrible, unathletic dudes. And Kirk Hinrich especially looks like a doofy 50's ball player. Bob Cousy or something.

This page has some more photos of the game.

Stone IPA is great

stoneIPA
Originally uploaded by squidpants.

so I am drinking this beer currently, it's amazing. I've had it before but forgotten how good it is - it's got a great aroma, very strong and flowery hops smell, and it tastes super fresh. The hops flavor is pretty strong, but it's not bitter, it's just a great, strong, crisp, flowery hops taste. And note the belgian lace on the glass, the bubbles still on there - it means the beer is fresh. This is honestly the freshest tasting beer I've had in a long time - it's from the Whole Foods on P Street. I recommend it very strongly for anybody who likes hops or pale ales, and then hope that you offer it to some pals who don't, because I bet they'll still like it. Stone makes some great beers, mostly very hoppy and with a ton of flavor. One of my favorite breweries.

so here are some fun links and things. my pal "Janevsky" sent me this article from Slate about Tecmo Bowl, one of the best sports video games ever. I consider its sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl, to be the best video game in history, hands down. I still play it too (see the webpage).

Also, my pal Don posted a hilarious thing about Chuck Norris. It is great.

And Shaq got sworn in as a Miami Beach reserve police officer. I think Shaq is a cool dude.

so I shot some peas out of my nose the other day. I was eating dinner and one went down the wrong pipe, so I coughed. My nose felt funny and I had to sneeze, so I grabbed a kleenex, and a pea appeared. Then I blew my nose and a couple more popped into the kleenex. pretty cool. my mouth was closed, and i definitely felt them come out my nose. it didn't hurt or anything - good thing they were peas and not peanuts or something.

In other news, I thought this article about a volcano in Vanuatu was pretty interesting. The land form is really wild, a lake in a crater surrounded by the ocean. Check out the photos on there too. Here's a map and a little more about the place.

GW 78-Maryland 70

gw
Originally uploaded by squidpants.

So I went to the BB&T Classic Monday at the MCI Center, where #19/21 GW beat #17/20 Maryland. It was pretty nervewracking and great.

The game was the first time since 1955 that the teams had played each other while both ranked in the top 25. It was a pretty big win, even bigger because GW beat Maryland last year in the same tournament, thus pretty much cementing the fact that GW is the best team in the area lately. Despite being dismantled last year, Maryland fans kept saying it was a fluke, a bad game, etc. After the game, Maryland coach Gary Williams, classy as always, came up with a laundry list of reasons why they lost, none of which had anything to do with GW beating them at their own game - he said they turned it over to much, he didn't prepare the team adequately, complained that his team had to play Minnesota (boo hoo - MN lost to Gardner-Webb earlier) and that his team played in Hawaii awhile ago and was tired. Pretty lame.The crowd was pretty heavily pro-Maryland, I'd say 3:1 or so, although GW's student section was bigger, which was odd.


I knew it was going to be a good night, because I saw the guy I call the Shaw Samurai hanging out at the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro while I was waiting for my pal to show up. We went to an owl-themed restaurant before the game, which was terrible, then walked over to the MCI Center in time to miss the tip-off. Our seats in the first half were ok, pretty much right behind the basket on the floor level, so the other basket was pretty small. I was pretty rowdy I guess in the first half, yelling and making fun of bad Maryland passes and cheers and stuff. I was decidely more calm in the second half, I guess because the game was tight.

It was pretty sloppy and rough in the first half, lots of called and uncalled hard fouls, bad passes, missed alley-oops, etc, but GW had a slight lead at halftime, despite pretty bad shooting, sub 30%. We moved to much better seats second half, on the side about 6 rows back from the court, near the GW basket. They were prety sweet. In the second half GW gradually pulled away, despite 5 key guys playing with 4 fouls - Pops Mensah-Bonsu (9 pts, 8 reb) and JR Pinnock (19 pts, 8 reb), both of whom fouled out, Mike Hall (14 pts, 12 reb), Omar Williams and Carl Elliott. Most of the guys played great (including sophomore Maureece Rice, who scored 19), but I was particularly impressed with Elliott, the point guard. He played good defense, scored 11, and at one point after a big crash into a Maryland player, ended up hitting the floor head first. He was on the ground for a long time, maybe 5 minutes, and when he got up there was a pool of blood. He went to bench, got stitches, and came back soon after with a big bandaid on his head and played the rest of the game, hitting the key free throws to finish the game out. (The Hatchet has a photo of the gash in its slideshow.) And at the end of the game, Carl was dribbling the clock out, my little group of GW fans were cheering and pointing at him and he was looking back at me, both of us like "Yeah, we did it." Corny I know, but it was pretty awesome.

It was a pretty sweet win though, GW played great, scoring when they needed to, getting stops on defense, shrugging off some terrible calls by the refs. At one point GW was up by nine, then Chris McCray from Maryland hit 3 three-pointers in a row in about 40 seconds, tying it up. But GW just kept going, got a few baskets in a row and some defensive stops, and led the rest of the game.

The crowd was pretty well-behaved, which was good, besides a jerk in a suit behind me. The guy was probably in his 50s or 60s, and looked like a respectable doctor of professor, not a jerky-looking guy. When we'd do something awesome, like an alley-oop or a three point play, I'd stand up and cheer, briefly, which is what normal fans do at sporting events. I stood a handful of times in the second half, probably 2 or 3, but I'd always sit down right afterwards, since I don't want to block peoples' view (as some Maryland dudes were doing in front of me, during free throws and everything else.) After a foul where we still scored, when action stopped, I was standing and clapping, and the guy behind me yelled "sit your ass down!" I turned around and said, "man, nothing is happening!" which it wasn't, players were just milling around, I think it was a TV time out or something. He kept saying "sit your stupid ass down, you're annoying me" and stuff like that, and I was saying "man, you're being a complete dick," which was true. I kept pointing out nothing was going on, but he was not convinced, it was ridiculous. His friend was kind of amused and said "hey, let's just agree, he's a dick, you're annoying," which I said sure, that's fine, but the other dude kept going "sit your ass down, sit your ass down" over and over. I sat down furious, but about a minute later him and his pal left, since Maryland was about to lose. So I made sure to wave goodbye and have a nice day sir and things of that nature. It's funny what a game will do to grown people (me included, as I was goading him).


Here's a few good articles on the game:
Post column by Mike Wise about GW and the BB&T - pretty sweet. My fav quote: "With the Terps experiencing growing pains and Georgetown content to fly cross-country rather than to drive across town, the Colonials are making their case, one dunk on Maryland at a time."
Post game article
Fox Sports article about Pops and the team by Yoni Cohen of yocohoops.com. Pretty good analysis.
GW Hatchet article

so I was watching this interesting show on Roman engineering, and they had various professors on there talking about stuff. Towards the end, they were talking about the fall of Rome, and had a guy on there talking, and the text said "Peter Weller - Syracuse University." Peter Weller was Robocop! It sounded like him and I had a couple of pals study abroad in Florence on a Syracuse-sponsored program, and they had classes with Peter Weller. They said he was a real pretentious jerk - my pal Alex said he went up to him once and said "hey man, I really liked Robocop" and he said "well I was in a lot of other things, including award-winning plays, but you wouldn't know about that" or something along those lines. His IMDB entry says he's now a professor at Cuse and is "very popular." Apparently he's still doing movies too, according to IMDB. Pretty kooky.

Here's an about him, from the NY Daily News. odd.

so I was walking to a bar last night, and there was the weirdest precipitation. it was like tiny little hailstones, or frozen snowflakes or something. They were coming down faster then snowflakes do, and they made noise when they hit stuff, it sounded like we were walking inside a rainstick. I remember from geography class that there was some kind of rare precipitation form and I looked it up, it's called graupel. So it was either that or snow grains. It wasn't freezing drizzle because it made a lot of noise hitting stuff, like tree leaves and cars, a little psshhh noise. Pretty weird stuff.

so I found this really funny video of a lady rocking out with a keytar - she is going absolutely nuts on that thing. The weird part is that the keytar is on a stand, I never knew there was a such a thing.

the weird thing is that I found the video while looking for pictures of Hurra Torpedo, the band that did the cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on kitchen appliances. Apparently they are now sponsored by Ford and are on tour in the US. I would love to see them. The journal on their very professional site (looks like Ford made it) says they broke up or something on November 8th. It does seem kind of fishy though, the whole story kind of seems like it's not real. Maybe the guy who was posting comments here before claiming that it was all part of a Ford marketing campaign was right. Still interesting though.

so I read today that Metro is going to put signs that say "Walk on the left, stand on the right" in stations. This is good news. I hate it when stupid tourists or other dummies stand where I would otherwise be walking, and thus block everybody and make me miss the train.

Also, my coworker sent me this completely messed up article: a guy cut off his balls after his favorite rugby team won, and he's not too sure why. Apparently he told his pals "if we win, I'll cut my balls off!" Though usually when people make statements like that ("I'll eat my hat") they don't actually do it. It's called "exaggeration." His description of doing it is so matter-of-fact and weird, the guy must be a psychopath. But a self-psychopath or something. I bet there is a word for that.