No Tuesday Top Ten

I'm too distraught over last night to post a Tuesday Top Ten this week. As a result of Michigan State's bed shitting, I missed out on approximately $801 that should have been mine. Worse yet, I was in a squares pool, and my numbers were 9 and 3. Thanks to some white dude's ill-advised lay-up with a few seconds left -- instead of making a three or drawing the foul and making the free throw -- UNC won 89-72. And with that, I missed out on another $1,000. And then my name wasn't called in the Rocks drawing for a trip to Vegas. These are just the latest in a long list of near misses that have come back to haunt me:

• In '73, it was between me and Paul Rodgers for lead singer of Bad Company. Needless to say, every time I hear "Feel Like Makin' Love," I feel like making hate (and sometimes ginger snaps, which I can't really explain).
• In '77, I was almost beaten out by like a million guys just like me, but I just had to be first. The rest, as they say, is a tortured, uneventful, and largely irrelevant history.
• In '85, Doc Brown let some dude in a puffy orange vest get first choice over me, so he got to go back to 1955, while I was forced to go back to 1973 and try out to be the lead singer of a band that an eight-year-old had no business fronting.
• In '90, for $2, I could have purchased either a third-year Michael Jordan card, an Emmitt Smith rookie card, or a Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie card, but, I splurged, and for an extra fifty cents, I got a Chris Sabo rookie card instead.
• In '96, I was passed up by Barry Alvarez for a scholarship that went to some overweight running back whose name escapes me.
• In 2000, I went to law school, instead of choosing a career path that didn't involve so much daily soul crushing.
• Between 2002 and 2006, I was told by no fewer than twelve law firms or corporations that "it was between you and one other person and, well . . ."
• In 2006, I sang "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" at live band karaoke at Piece, but all of the major label A&R reps in the audience got there just after I finished.

So basically, with a few breaks, my obit could have read: "Time traveling platinum-selling Heisman winner who never went to law school, but had twelve law jobs, made hundreds from baseball cards, was re-discovered by EMI at pizzeria, and won a trip to Vegas and nearly $2000 after Michigan State won 2009 NCAA title 99-13, was never conceived." But now, with last night's losses, I have nothing left to live for (aside from my beautiful wife and autistic dog, of course. Oh, and hair band music.).