Live blogging the Big Game (1st Half)

9:42 We're getting killed and e-blogger just ate my last post during which UNC raced to a double-digit lead with all five starters scoring before the first commerical break. They are dominating us at both ends. it's 24-11 with 11:41 left in the first half. We're turning over and they are knocking down shots.
9:44 Well, it's Opening Night for the Tigers. They started Justin Verlander in Toronto tonight because as you know, you want your best pitcher starting The Opener for you. Verlander lost 17 last year. The Tigs were down 9-1 when I checked earlier. Verlander gave up 8 earned on 8 hits in two and two thirds. Nice. Tigers trying to come back, though. Down 9-5 in the 8th.
9:49 We're down by 18. 18!? The first half isn't half over...and now it's twenty, 31-11. We are on pace to be down by 40 at the half. I wish CBS hadn't put up that graphic about how MSU has never lost a Title game. Bad Mojo.
9:51 32-11 UNC with exactly ten to go in the first half. I think UNC is already in the bonus. They had, the Tarheels, 27 FT attempts per game on average and took over 200 more free throws than their opponents this season. Now it's 34-11. Finally Lucas hits a bomb to end to 10-0 UNC run. Summers hits a 3 and MSU is rallying...pulling to within 20. UNC is killing us on the boards. Killing us! They are much too much for MSU.
9:55 Ooops. 11-5 Toronto in the 8th. Commercial break with 7:33 left in the first and it's UNC 38, MSU 18. Yikes...

Live-Blogging the Big Game (pre-game)

9:07 Welcome to Detroit and the NCAA Mens Basketball Championship, the biggest sporting event in this town since Super Bowl Extra Large (XL) was held here a couple of years ago. The venue is Ford Field which was designed as a football stadium but which, since the Detroit Lions calls it home, lacks a football team, per se.
9:09 Interesting Ford Field Fact: A beer at Ford Field costs $8.50. Really. $8.50. I think the .50 is just piling on. Some hot chick is asking the North Carolina why the Tar Babys or whatever the hell they are called won't just kick MSU's ass by 35 points again like they did back in December and he says MSU has Goran Suton back and it's a big game and MSU will rise to the occasion and blah, blah, blah...
9:11 Another Interesting Ford Field Fact: When you go there to cover a football game and you get on the elevator and ask the attendant to take you to the Press Box she presses a button labelled "7". Seriously. You watch from the 7th floor. That way when somebody asks you how the Lions looked, you can honestly answer, "I really couldn't tell."
9:13: Tom Izzo, MSU coach, was just shown giving his pre-game talk to he fellows. He seems to think the Spartans have a chance. Izzo's coaching was what beat U-Con Saturday. MSU scored so many points in transisition in that game after spending the season scoring off a set offense. Izzo ran 'em to death Saturday. I heard Izzo say the other day that UNC averages 7 free throw attempts per game. That's amazing. What it says it to stop 'em you gotta foul 'em.
9:21 Did I mention I'm an actual Spartan? Michigan State is where I went to college...so when I say "us" and "we", I mean it and right now I am telling you that our basketball team can kick your football team's ass!
9:24 Game on!

Fpr All Big Games

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33426

Here's the best way to prepare for any big game:

You Will Suffer Humiliation When The Sports Team From My Area Defeats The Sports Team From Your Area

As you can see from the calendar, the game is coming up this weekend. I'm sure you are as excited for it as I am, as our cities are rivals and have been for quite some time. Your confidence in your team is high, but rest assured, you will suffer humiliation when the sports team from my area defeats the sports team from your area.
On numerous occasions, you have expressed the conviction that your area's sports team will be victorious. I must admit that every time I hear you make this proclamation, I react with both laughter and disbelief. "Ha!" I say to myself with laughter. "What?!" I say to myself in disbelief. How could you believe that your sports team could beat my sports team? It is clear that yours is inferior in every way.
When the sporting contest begins, the players on your team will be treated as though they are inconsequential. It will be remarkably easy for my team to accumulate more points than yours. There are many reasons for this, starting with the inferior physical attributes of the players representing your area. Strength, speed, and agility are just three of the qualities that the players on the team from your area lack. The players representing my area, on the other hand, have these traits in abundance.
I would not be a bit surprised if the individuals on the team from your area were sexually attracted to members of their own gender. That is how ineffective they are on the field of battle.
Underscoring your team's inferiority is its choice of colors. It is ludicrous to believe that your team's colors inspire either respect or fear. Instead, they appear to have been chosen by someone who is colorblind or, perhaps, bereft of sight altogether. The colors for my team, on the other hand, are aesthetically pleasing when placed in proximity to one another. They are a superior color combination in every way.
While we are on the subject of aesthetics, let us compare the respective facilities in which our teams play. While my team's edifice is blessed with architectural splendor and the most modern of amenities, yours is a thoroughly unpleasant place in which to watch a sporting contest. I know of what I speak, for I once attended a game between our respective teams in your facility. Let's just say the experience left me wishing that my car was inoperable that day due to mechanical problems, rendering it impossible for me to get to your area to attend the game.
If you need another reason why the sporting franchise representing my area is superior, look no further than the supporters for the two sides. Not only are the supporters of the team from my region more spirited, but they are also more intelligent and of finer breeding than you and the rest of your ilk. In addition, the female supporters of the team from my area possess more attractive countenances and figures than yours. Some of the women from my side that I have observed could make a living by posing for pictures for major men's magazines. The women who cheer for your team, I'm afraid, are far too unattractive to do so.
One of the more pathetic aspects of the team from your area is the fact that only people in your immediate area possess an affinity for it. By means of contrast, the team from my area inspires loyalty and affection in individuals who live in many other geographic locations.
To illustrate this point, let me tell a brief story: Recently, I was on vacation in an area of the country far away from my own, and I saw many individuals wearing items of clothing that bore the insignia of my team. I approached one such individual and asked him if he originated from my area. He said no, explaining that he simply liked the team from my area and had for many years. Interestingly enough, during this trip, I saw no clothing or other paraphernalia bearing the insignia of your team.
Do you still doubt that the team from your area is inferior to the one from mine? Just look at our teams' respective histories. In the past, we have defeated you on any number of occasions. Granted, there were times when your team beat my team, but those were lucky flukes.
The day of the game will soon be at hand. And no matter how hard you pray to a higher power or how many foam accoutrements you wear in support of the team from your area, your team will be defeated. We will win and you will lose. This is your fate.
Prepare for humiliation. It shall be upon you at the designated hour.

Live-Blogging the NCAA Championship Game

We will be Live-Blogging tonight’s Biggest Game Ever starting around 8:45pm EDT.  We’d get started sooner, but I have my first yoga (should that be capitalized?) class tonight.  In spite of this, I doubt I will be very calm.

Just by way of setting the scene, it has snowed today here in Detroit which is good because it keeps visitors to Detroit stuck in their hotel room where they will not be set upon by the zombie hoards who roam the streets at will.  (Seriously, DO NOT go off the beaten path in Detroit.  Shuttle busses, people, shuttle busses!  We do not have the highest or second-highest per-capita murder rate in the country because we haven’t been trying, you know!  It’s 70 times the murder rate in Toronto, by the way.  Yea!  The only difference between Detroit and New Orleans is that musty, mildewey smell.  And we didn’t even need a hurricane to destroy 85% of our city.)

The local TV stations have spent the past couple of days outdoing each other in predicting todays “blizzard”.  For snow predicitions I heard anywhere from 1-3” to 6-8” to Certain Imminent Death.  Just depends on who you want to believe, I guess.  As it stands right now, the snow is covering the grass.  Everything else seems okay.

Tip-off tonight is 9:21pm.  Please make of note of it and we will see you back here this evening.

Live blogging the Big Game (1st Half)

9:25 They gave Suton all day to shoot a 3 and it took it and made it so I hope NC gives us that all night. Green from NC just comes down and pours in a three of his own. Green slices in for a nifty layup and we're down 3-7. MSU turns it over twice and fouls Hansborough. U-Conn missed a boatload of FT's Saturday....Hansborough makes 'em both. 3-9. Finally, UNC turns it over.
9:29 Suton just offered up a brick from ten feet. We're nervous but Raymar Morgan hits from the right wing. UNC comes back and scores and then steals the inbound pass. MSU fouls. Damn UNC is good. 5-12 and we've only played three and a half. We're down 7 and they haven't even had a commerical yet. Make it 5-15 as they hit a three. Wow. Suton travels. UNC has hit 6 of 7 shots and all 5 starters have scored. 7-17 with 15:24 left in the first half. Looks like a blowout.
9:34 Opening Night for the Tigers. Let's check in with them, shall we? You want to start your best pitcher in the opener, right? The Tigs tonight sent Justin Verlander to the hill. He lost 17 last year. It was 9-1 Toronto a while ago...but now it's 9-5. In the 8th at Skydome which isn't, apparently, called Skydome, anymore.
9:36 back to the game. State down 12...steal...uncontested rebound...State down 14! Oh, my Lord God. It's already over.

Friday Musical Interlude: Manny Mota Edition

“Pinch-hitting for Pedro Bourbon, Manny Mota, Mota….”

Dave von Ebers is, as you know, taking the week off and has green-lighted my request to fill the Friday Musical Interlude void created by his absence.  It is a decision I am sure he will regret.

I’m posting this early because if it’s Friday I’m playing hockey and today I have a hot date right after so I won’t be around to post until, well, who knows.  (Mrs. Kincaide is okay with this, just so you know.). I’m seeing an old friend after the skate and I’m really looking forward to it.  Lori’s a great gal and I haven’t seen her in ages.  I’ll tell you one thing, if I wasn’t old enough to be her father and if she wasn’t physically repulsed by me, well, we would have been quite an item. 

Let’s hope what happened to me Tuesday doesn’t happen to me today.  Back when I was starting out, back when I was a mere wisp of a goalie, I heard of another netminder getting his collarbone broken by a shot.  If you know what the upper body protector we goalies wear looks like, you’d be like I was when I heard that.  You couldn’t believe it could happen.  The thing’s made out of Kevlar and it covers you right up to the top of the neck.  But still, some poor, hapless goalie goes out there and gets his collarbone shattered by a slapshot.

I couldn’t figure out how.  Sort of like the time I was out for warm-up and the goalie at the other end went down in a screaming heap.  He’d taken a puck strike to the knee.  I couldn’t understand how it could have happened.  Between the goal pad itself, and the knee protector I’d had sewn on to the underside of the pad, and the knee pads that are stitched to the hem of my goalie pants, I couldn’t understand how a puck could hit you on the knee.  Then one day I’m out there and this guy Rat (that’s what everybody called him, “Rat”) fires from right out in front and I turn my right skate so it’s parallel to the goal line and kick out my leg in desperation and, viola, the puck hits me and stays out.  A kick save and a beauty.  A game-saver, in fact.  But at that point I didn’t care about the game anymore because I was a screaming heap in front of my net.  When I turned my foot I exposed the inside of my leg and the puck hit me square on the inside of my knee.  Right there where there’s no muscle or fat to absorb the blow.  It was like having somebody hit you on the knee with a ball-peen hammer.  It hurt for about six months.

So I’m out there Tuesday and I go down to block a shot but the thing rises on me a little more than I’d expected (ideally you’d like to take it right in the sternum and then catch it on the carom off your chest with your trapper) so I jerk my left shoulder up to make the save.  Which I did.  And I was really proud of that for about a nanosecond until the pain hit.  Apparently when my shoulder went up, my chest protector stayed down and my collarbone was left unprotected and son-of-a-b---- it hurt.  I went down in a screaming heap.  We actually had to stop the game for a couple of minutes, which almost never happens.  I’m pretty sure I sounded like the guy Joe Pesci killed with that ink pen in Goodfellas.  All I can think is that the puck was on edge or it clipped the neck protector which is tied to my mask (that piece of equipment was invented after Buffalo’s Clint Malarchuk had his jugular sliced open by a skate, thanks Clint!) and deflected straight down.  No matter.  I thought I might have to go and get it x-rayed yesterday but it’s better today.

I’ve been playing about 18 years now and it was the first time it’s ever happened, so we should be okay.  The shooter apologized to me and I told him there was no reason for him so to do.  After all, I was trying to get hit by the puck.  It’s the point of the position I play.

Now, finally, today’s musical selection.  Dave always has a story about what the song means to him and stuff like that there.  Like a couple of weeks ago when he went with “Growing Up” by Bruce Springsteen which I thought was an amazing coincidence since it was pretty much my favorite song all through college and one of my best friends can vouch for that because I must have made him play it for me on his stereo four or five hundred times when I was A). Hammered, B). “Reflective”, or C). All of the Above. But not today.  I picked today’s song just because I happen to like the way it sounds.  However, having seen the music video for the first time while preparing today’s FMI, (I’d only heard the song heretofore) I’m (shhhh….) pretty sure it’s about LESBIANS.  Really!  I think it is.  People LOVE lesbians.  And as a result of the ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court today declaring homosexual marriage legal, we have a nifty tie-in, after all.  The court ruling, issued today without dissent, reads in part:

In short, for purposes of Iowa’s marriage laws, which are designed to bring a sense of order to the legal relationships of committed couples and their families in myriad ways, plaintiffs are similarly situated in every important respect, but for their sexual orientation. As indicated above, this distinction cannot defeat the application of equal protection analysis through the application of the similarly situated concept because, under this circular approach, all distinctions would evade equal protection review. Therefore, with respect to the government’s purpose of “providing an institutional basis for defining the fundamental relational rights and responsibilities of persons,” same–sex couples are similarly situated to opposite–sex couples.

So, on to the tunes. The girls, from Russia I believe, call themselves T.a.t.U. 

I hope you enjoy it and keep a good thought for Dave who I am sure will be back with the FMI next week.  Heck, once he catches wind of this he may create the “Monday Musical Interlude”!

Eff These Effing Effers

The numb nuts at Fox News are at it again.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading when I heard of the latest Ruppert Murdoch outrage last Friday on one of the best websites in America, Jesus’ General. 

This time, these assholes have gone too far.  This time they made fun of the Canadian Forces who are helping us in Afghanistan.  The details of this story can be found in, of all places, the pages of the ridiculously right-wing Washington Times, another media outlet run by a foreigner, in this case the religious nut Sung Young Moon or whatever the hell his name his.

At any rate, according to the paper, here’s what the Fox News idiots said (and if you don’t believe it, the video can easily be found on YouTube and elsewhere):

The show's host, Greg Gutfeld, mocked Canadian forces as he opened a discussion into reports that Canadian Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie noted that his troops might need a year off after their mission ends in Afghanistan in 2011.

"The Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants," Mr. Gutfeld said, during an episode of the show last week.

Another panelist, comedian Doug Benson quipped, "I didn't even know they were in the war. I thought that's where you go if you don't want to fight. Go chill in Canada."

The panelists on the show, which airs weekdays at 3 a.m., also mocked Canadian troops needing a break for "manicures and pedicures." They joked that Canada should be invaded and made fun of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Canada has lost 116 Canadian soldiers in the war against terrorism in the south Asian nation since they deployed to Afghanistan in 2001. Four were killed last week in a roadside explosion near Kandahar in the violent southern part of the country.

I happen to get the CBC national news on my cable system and while as we all know the loss of four Americans soldiers might merit a brief mention -- a line or two deep into the NBC Nightly News, I can assure you the Canadian media take their military losses much more seriously.  The night those four men died, The National , The CBC’s nightly hour-long 10pm Eastern newscast, devoted at least 8 minutes to the story, much of the information supplied by their own correspondent in Afghanistan.  The next night featured footage of the caskets of the dead being carried to the plane which was to take them home.  The pallbearers were their fellow soldiers.  Several of them were weeping as they performed their duty. 

I am not proud of my country when we permit dirtbags like the dirtbags on Fucked News to mock the service of these brave men.  They died, you dumb fucks, for our security and our freedom.  Which means, of course, for your security and your freedom.  How fucking stupid can you fucking be, anyway?

Here in the states, we don’t see our dead come home in caskets and we don’t see their remains being lowered into graves.  When Nightline dared to merely show the pictures and the names of our war dead on-air a few years ago the right had itself a fit. 

By contrast, here is how Canada honors their fallen heroes.  And keep in mind, this is how they do it during broadcasts of hockey games:

 Fuck you, Fox.  And thank you, Canada.  When I pray for our troops I pray for yours as well.