Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Real Time
Saturday
March 4, 2006
"So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she can be so cold"
-The White Stripes "The Denial Twist"
I miss the opening line that they used to use in the beginning of the great TV show 24 where Keifer Sutherland (who is great at voiceovers) would say the line, "Events happen in real time." This isn't like the movie High Noon (hyperlinked to the IMDB page), the 1952 Gary Cooper classic that I watched for my Screenplay Writing class in college in 1999, where literally they did the movie as if it was in real time (all the way down to the clocks in the background being a spot-on match.) The show 24 began to have to fudge the whole real time thing from time to time, so they dumped that line from the intro a long time ago.
This is something I bring up because, when time becomes scarce for me (i.e. lots to do in a small amount of time), I think about that clock they have on 24 when they bump in and out of commercials that beeps as every second passes. That's what I've faced as of late, with the new Ned Only CD (which Bubba acknowledged on-air yesterday was an idea I originally pitched last summer, but which initially was rebuffed -- I suppose Ned has more pull than I do.) Yesterday it was just page after page after page of orders, like nothing I've ever seen. When the old Bubba Army site went live in November 2003, it wasn't this bad. All I know is that without the Pitney Bowes (postage meter) machine, we'd be screwed.
ESPN SportsCenter actually had Evansville Aces basketball highlights on last night, as the Missouri Valley Conference now has TV coverage of its tournament quarter-finals. Unfortunately the "highlights" all belonged to Southern Illinois. UE finished the season 10-19. Ugh. The Aces haven't been the same since Marcus Wilson graduated (the same year I did.) This is a long way from playing a Roy Williams coached Kansas team, with the chance to play Kentucky with a win, in New Orleans in that crazy month of March 1999.
This is a fun time of the year for college basketball fans, with the conference tournaments heating up and some great games on tap. I really wish that my cable company would pick up ESPN U, but even without that channel, there will be plenty of great choices to be had. And then the big tournament... well that will just be fun, as usual. I really hope that Duke will play Gonzaga, if for nothing else so that there's an Adam Morrison vs. J.J. Reddick showdown in a big time game.
Why are Belmont and David Lipscomb playing the Atlantic Sun conference championship game in Johnson City, TN? They're both located in Nashville, and they're the top two seeds, so how did the tournament end up being played east of Knoxville?
As I type this, there's less than one minute to go in the Big South Championship game between Winthrop and Coastal Carolina, and the game is tied. Sports drama is a fun thing. It beats the drama that I tend to find with the women who come and go in my life.
While it's still free, I recommend that you go check out Bill Simmons' website and read his two-part interview with writer Malcolm Gladwell. It's fascinating to me on many levels, but the argument that Gladwell makes on why he, or any other fan, would likely be a better GM for the New York Knicks than Isiah Thomas is great. I wonder if the NBA will enact some "Isiah Rules" to protect the Knicks from being indefinitely crippled?
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