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A-10 tourney... Finals Day Arrives
3/15/05
by Clay

We spent the day of the A-10 championship playing car-racing games at Jillians. Shekhar is convinced that I committed a tremendous transgression when in the midst of our heated ovals, I said,
"Man, I can't even tell where you are on the track."
A moment later he surged past me for a fraction of a second and said, "I think I just lapped someone." Then he spent the next two laps taking it easy and not contesting me when I went flying back by him. When he finished he was pretty pissed to see that I had actually been in front of him.
"I can't believe you played mind games in Daytona Speedway 2001." Then he just shook his head.
...
Back at the Jillian's table Shekhar did two remarkable things:

1. He ordered his fourth diet pepsi of the trip. The diet pepsi has also been accompanied by at least one diet coke and at no times has featured alcohol. He sees nothing at all wrong with this, but even our cabdriver did when when we went for White Castle after the cleavage bar. It's clear this is not something twentysomething males actually do, because every time he ordered a diet pepsi the person taking the order would make diet pepsi its own interrogatory like this: "Diet pepsi?" And he would have to reconfirm his order.

2. Insisted that birds do not have blood. This was because we were continuing to discuss how I could have made the stupendous journalistic error of not realizing that the bird was the cause of the fan malfunction. This is what he actually said,
"That's because birds don't have blood."
Everyone was shocked by this comment. Blown away actually. This seemed like the sort of thing that if it were true might rival the refutation of the geocentric theory (I almost wrote heliocentric theory and I was picturing the condemnatory emails that would come flying in from our readership of approximately ten suggesting that I had evidently missed the last 500 years of scientific advancement.) Everyone expressed their disagreement. Shekhar then followed up his bloodless contention by saying, "It's because they are aviaries." Which didn't prove anything at all but allowed him to seem smarter by saying aviaries. So if anyone actually knows whether this is true or not please let us know because we refused to continue arguing this because no one was willing to capture and kill a bird at Jillian's.

Instead, I gave my buddy Weatherholt a napkin and instructed him to give me the last ten years worth of endings to the University of Kentucky basketball seasons and significant calls/plays that caused the outcome. I know a lot of great sports fans, but Weatherholt is by far the most passionate. I mean, I went on a pudding strike for the Titans, but Weatherholt is such a committed fan he makes me seem like the worst kind of front-runner. He's the kind of sports fan who you actually feel embarrassed to admit that you missed your favorite team's game for any reason whatsoever. He just sort of nods but I can tell I've somehow failed him. I feel like I'm doing a pretty poor job of explaining how passionate he is, so here is his recordation that took exactly eight minutes for him to complete:

...
There were will be plenty more Weatherholt to come, and I haven't even bothered to check the accuracy of these details because I am certain they are correct. Note that only once did Kentucky just get beat.
...
Departure from Jillian's for US Bank arena occurred in a cab driven by a man smoking a pipe. At no time does he offer me a fistbump. When we arrived in the arena we made our way down close to the GW seating section where I attempted to procure a foam tri-colored Colonials hat from a GW student with a sack full of said foam hats. He spurned me. "I've only got a few," he said. When has any man ever needed more than one foam tri-colored hat?
...
Just before the game starts, I have another idea for what Cincinnati's slogan might be (and this one doesn't even incorporate the Zooperstars.)
Cincinnati- "Where everything you want to do requires a trip to Kentucky."
...
OK, so I can't leave the Zooperstars alone, just before the tipoff, I started wondering what the cleavage bar would do if Shaquille O'Seal, Yao Flamingo, Dick Flytale and Stallion Iverson tried to get inside (other than there being four of them the Zooperstars would look no more awkward at the cleavage bar than we did). Would the bouncers call the cops? Could the Zooperstars fit in a paddy wagon? Would their Zooperstar names count as aliases?
...
Check back tomorrow for the result of the championship game.