In Like a Lion Indeed

Fuck early March in Chicago. The one day I go out for lunch is the day it's snowing sideways at a 25-30 mph clip, smacking me in the face as if to say, "I disrespect you immensely, and I do not value your feelings." The lamb at the end of March better be extra succulent to make up for this.

Did anyone else see last night's 30 Rock? Absolutely hilarious. I laughed out loud at several junctures.

I know some of you were happy that I stopped the daily recounting of my horribly demented dreams, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop sharing my dreams with you all together. This one I had last night is just way too random for me to let slide. For most of you, it will bear no significance, but for anyone who was a Pi Kapp at IU during the 1996-97 school year (and particularly you Sigma class members out there), it will possibly crack you up. Here it is:

So there I was, sitting with Ball at what I think was Bonnaroo, although it was at the Cossitt Elementary School playground instead of Manchester, Tennessee. We were enjoying ourselves when some guy comes up to us and asks, "Are your names Chris and Andrew? Were you guys Sigmas?" Of course we responded "Yes." The dude then says, "So was I. Can you guess who I am?" It obviously wasn't someone who got initiated, since we would have recognized all of them right off the bat. Ruling out Nick Panetta and Greg Weir immediately (since they never even showed up to the first meeting and therefore would not consider themselves Sigmas), Chris and I ran through guys in our class who never got initiated. It wasn't Paul Stokes, Jake Townsend, or JJ Imel, which left with one choice. "Jon Saxe?" I asked. "Hell yeah," he responded. He then asked us to help him with something (although he did not explain what), and Chris and I obviously agreed. We went with him back to his apartment, which was right there on Madison across from the playground. In the basement of his apartment was a Nautilus machine in a room full of mirrors (and some nicely concealed closets). Jon explained to us that he was now a UFC fighter, and his girlfriend would come over all the time to use his gym, even when he wasn't there. While doing some seated rows, Jon explained that he feared his girlfriend was cheating on him and bringing her paramour to Jon's gym, but the cameras he set up were not providing him with enough clarity for the situation. Thus, while he was out running some errands, he wanted Chris and me to perform amateur surveillance by hiding in one of the gym's closets during the time his girlfriend was supposed to be there. For some reason Chris and I were skeptical about the whole thing. I'm not even kidding, but in the dream in my head I was thinking, "I wonder if he's on shrooms right now. Should I trust a word he's saying?" After he left, Chris and I went back to the concert rather than stake out Saxe's workout room. We were supposed to meet some people along Harris Avenue before we went back into the concert, including my brother Reed. For some reason, Reed brought with him an animal that resembled a hybrid of a fox and an ocelot. It was not pleasant, and it did not like any of us, including Reed. I tried to play with it, but all it wanted to do was bit me. We hopped the chain link fence in an attempt to escape it, but that little foxelot jumped the fence as well, chasing us back up to where the stage was. It was one of the few times in a dream where I have been able to run at a regular speed. Luckily there was a bouncer there who prevented the foxelot from advancing any further.

I should note that I have not seen Jon Saxe in approximately nine years, although I was very upset that my dream did not feature any Saxe-isms, such as "brickeater." I can't remember any other Saxe-isms at the present time. Wee Wee (or others), can you remember any others?

Speaking of basketball, there has been a lot of talk (read: very little talk) about which Big Ten teams had the easiest conference schedule. As you may or may not know, the Big Ten plays a 16-game schedule, which means that each team plays 6 teams twice and 4 teams only once. So, for instance, this year IU only played Ohio State and Northwestern on the road and only played Wisconsin and Minnesota at home. As a result of this imbalanced method of scheduling, some teams play a much easier schedule than others. According to ESPN.com's Drive to 65 (formerly the Bubble Watch), Illinois fans were whining (surprise) about something the Drive said a few days ago about the difference in toughness of schedule between Illinois and Purdue. I did some crack research, and it turns out that Purdue does in fact have the weakest Big Ten schedule, followed closely by Illinois. Below is the breakdown, given the current standings, of the combined Big Ten record of the teams that each Big Ten team didn't play twice, with the teams not played twice in parentheses. Obviously, the better the combined record of the teams not played, the weaker the schedule. The order is weakest schedule to strongest:

1. Purdue (Ill, MSU, Iowa, Wisc) = 37-23
2. Illinois (OSU, Wisc, Pur, PSU) = 36-24
3. Wisconsin (IU, Ill, Mich, Pur) = 34-26
4. Minnesota (OSU, MSU, IU, PSU) = 33-27
4. Northwestern (IU, Iowa, Mich, MSU) = 33-27
6. Iowa (OSU, Pur, Mich, NW) = 32-28
7. Indiana (OSU, Wisc, Minn, NW) = 31-30
8. Ohio State (IU, Ill, Iowa, Minn) = 29-32
9. Penn State (Ill, MSU, Mich, Minn) = 28-33
10. Michigan (Wisc, Iowa, PSU, NW) = 24-36
11. Michigan State (Pur, Minn, NW, PSU) = 15-46