Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Instant Classic
Saturday
March 27, 2004
If you missed tonight's St. Joseph's/Oklahoma State basketball game... well you missed out on an instant classic. Scrappy, back-and-forth, high drama, with the winner to get a trip to the Final Four. OSU was down by one when John Lucas, III hit a three-pointed with less than :10 to go to give the Cowboys the win. Damn, so much for the dream final of St. Joe's vs. Xavier, but at least SJU went out in a great one.
Incidentally, does Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton ever look happy? Only kidding -- he was smiling as OSU cut down the nets in East Rutherford. But between him and St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli, don't they look more like two guys who you'd expect to see sitting in the front row at the Mons Venus than guys coaching a big game? Maybe not moreso that former Utah coach Rick Majerus, but I think it's a viable observation.
And note to Martelli: go with the shaved head look. Trust me. That hair isn't coming back, buddy.
| | Left: Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton; Center: St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli; Right: Former Utah coach Rick Majerus. |
Don't you love it when creative minds held bring you things like protected legroom on airplane flights? I sure do. Being 6'2", I can promise you that it's a monumental pain when some jackass in front of you decides to put their seat into recline mode. Anyway, now there's
this nice invention called the "Knee Defender" that blocks them from being able to do it. I for one support it... though there's no word on how the airlines feel about the seat blockers.
|  | | Boarding pass sold separately. |
I finally had the chance to catch the new HBO show Deadwood tonight (thanks to my DVR)... and the first episode was excellent. Having that and The Sopranos back-to-back will be a nice thing for HBO. As Scott Keene explained it to me at work, Deadwood is how "Westerns should've been done." I tend to agree with him on that. Definite sense of realism there.
In running over some t-shirts to Bubba today, Scott Massey and I discovered that there's still a "Frank Sanchez for mayor" billboard up on Adamo Drive. What's up with that? I think I'll buy a DraftKing.com billboard for one month and then see how long it stays up there.
Today I went back to Malibu Rayz for another "Mystic Tan" session. I needed it; I was beginning to turn back into the Pale White Hope. And I didn't want that.
My sister Mary Beth posted the following paragraph on one of her weblogs (she keeps two of them):
I just got off the phone with Matt...it's great to hear from him again finally. He got back from Cancun, and has officially barred me from going there. But he met a girl there he seems to be
really into. It seems like this girl means a bit more to him than the usual girls he and Lou meet. I hope this works out for him...
As Lil Jon would say: Whaaaaaaatttt? Not about Mary Beth being banned from Cancun; I agree (sorry Shroom). But easy on judging what a given girl means or doesn't mean to me.
In the spirit of these reality shows that do the recap (i.e. filler) episodes with "all new material", here's some all new info from
last weekend's trip to Orlando. Scott and I talked about it jokingly as we drank and watched basketball this afternoon/evening, but who am I to pass up on stories never before told on this site!
-In probably the most bizarre sequence I've ever seen involving a dollar, I went up to throw a tip down for the stripper on stage at the gentleman's club we attended last Saturday night. I put it up on the table for the girl, which earned me plaudits from the really bad house DJ (who was, as Scott noted, about one rung up from a skating rink DJ). But no one else seemed to notice. Usually strippers snag dollars as fast as they snort the white stuff up their noses backstage, but this particular dollar somehow fell into no-man's land. The ditsy stripper overlooked it, the patrons on the front row (i.e. money mark territory) didn't touch it (lest they potentially provoke me), and there it sat. It became a running joke of its own, a game of sorts: how long will the dollar last? Amazingly, there it sat and sat, with the clock clicking on into uncharted territory. We're talking Penguins/Flyers 5 OT from 2000 stuff here. Finally I think the waitress ended up with it, about 15 minutes from closing time. I may never see anything approach that record in my lifetime. DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak, Cal Ripken's consecutive game played streak... and the dollar-on-the-table record. Only Ed Reulbach's two complete game shutouts in one day (for the 1908 Chicago Cubs) might have a better chance of standing.
-O-Rock 105.9 (WOCL) had a really cool thing last weekend with their "old school" weekend of programming, with classic alternative rock tunes.
97X (WSUN-FM) followed suit in Tampa this weekend, with songs like "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by the Crash Test Dummies that I hadn't heard on the radio in years.
-Gary kept mentioning that UCF (Central Florida) had finished 3-9 the past season in football when they would do those "scores from around the country" updates during the TV timeout (when local favorite UCF was playing Pitt in a close game up in Milwaukee). In any other situation, I might've admonished him for thinking about an out-of-season sport... but with football I make an exception. Plus I like talking about NCAA Football at an NCAA tournament event. I've got your BCS right here...
-There are no bars next to the TD Waterhouse Centre (or if there are, they are well hidden). What kind of basketball arena is that? You'd think some entrepreneurial bar prospectors would've opened up shop in the 16 or so years since the Magic have been in Orlando.
-Writing that last sentence made me feel old. I have a feeling that I'm going to have that feeling much more than I like from here on out...
|
