March Madness (a day early)

It's time for March Madness!  Every Monday this time of year, i do a mock NCAA Tournament bracket, based solely on the Sagarin ratings.  The only adjustments i make are to make sure that conference teams cannot possibly face each other prior to the Regional Finals, and to make sure that two teams from the same conference are not seeded #1 and #2 in the same regional.

Sagarin's top 4 teams are, in this order:  UNC, Illinois, Duke, and Wake Forest.  Yes, 3 ACC teams.  It really is better out here.

For the automatic conference qualifiers, i assume that the top team rated by Sagarin in each conference will win their tournament.  And then i take the remaining top X teams to get to 64 (i ignore the play-in game).

The last at-large team in this week is Stanford, rated #48.  First team missing the cut was Wichita St.

By conference, the ACC gets 6 bids, including the Wolfpack.  The Big 10 gets 6, as does the Big 12 (including the surprising Aggies).  The Big East has 7 teams, including two 11 seeds.  The SEC also gets 7.

For my Blue Devil friends, the Duke path starts with Farleigh Dickinson, then the winner of Arkansas vs. Texas A&M.  Then a likely path of Boston College or Wisconsin, and then either Washington or Michigan St.

For my brother, the Tar Heel, UNC starts with Mississippi Valley St (who gave Duke a scare about 15 years ago in the first round).  Then, Iowa/Mississippi St.  Then, Villanova/Texas Tech.  And then, Oklahoma St./Louisville.

My Biggest High School Failure

As a high school senior, i was persuaded to serve as the president of our drama club -- we called it the Masque & Wig Club. I had roles in almost every play throughout my HS career, so i guess i was deemed the natural fit, even though i wasn't really motivated to lead the group.

And while i didn't make a great club president, that wasn't my greatest failure. No, that would be my failure to get a very talented freshman to try his hand with acting. Kid's name was Eric Bishop, and he was clearly that most talented kid most of us had seen -- dude could play the piano, sing, do spot-on imitations, tell jokes, and just flat-out entertain.

And today, that kid, now grown-up and star-named Jamie Foxx, is the favorite to win a Best Actor Oscar in tonight's Academy Award ceremonies, for his born-to-play portrayal of Ray Charles. He's also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the cabbie Max in Collateral (where i felt he out-performed Tom Cruise).

One of the world's top actors, at least for the moment, was in my high school, and we didn't get him into the school plays. Doh! Just how good would our one-act play of The Glass Menagerie have been if Eric was playing the gentleman caller, rather than me? We would have won the district competition, for sure. (An added bonus: i wouldn't have the scarring memories of being panned by the judge -- i haven't acted since.)

Anyhow, what's past is prologue, as some playwright once said. Prologue for what i hope is a Foxx victory tonight. It would make his success, and my failure, complete.

Strange Things are Afoot at the Harris Teeter

Valentine’s Day weekend, Julie & i were returning from a nice dinner out when we stopped by the grocery store to get the right kind of diet dog food. It was about 830pm on a Friday night.

Checking out, we all of a sudden hear a man shout from somewhere behind us. Stop!” or “Hey!”, something like that. Everyone naturally turns to see what’s going on. As we turn, I see the flash of a young woman run out the swooshing double-doors, with the man hot on her heels. At the 2nd set of automatic doors, she has to pause just long enough that her pursuer catches up. The guy tackles her just outside the store.

Meanwhile, customers and employees alike are trying to decipher the sequence, and decide whether we should do anything. My first thought was that the man was some sort of psycho, and the girl was trying to get away from him. Maybe just a natural inclination that the more powerful male must be preying on the weaker female (that’s not some grand political or social commentary; just an observation of pure physical prowess among these 2 folks).

I eventually (what? 3-5 seconds later) decide that I should go outside and see if everything is ok. By the time I get outside, the girl is tearing off in her car as a bagger tries to jot down her license plate. Turns out that she had snatched the purse of the man’s wife, while they shopped. When he tackled the thief, he got the purse back with little struggle.

Crime, in the suburbs!

The guy walks back into the store, a bit disheveled, and looking quite annoyed at the rest of us for not helping him. But the cliché of “it all happened so fast” is quite true. The situation is just so unexpected and comes upon you so fast that your brain cannot make sense of it quickly enough for you to help.