Meep Meep

Trivia Rocks
The Kings of Rocks Trivia are back. Last week I was absent, as the team pulled in a second place finish, thus winning the chance to choose a category. They chose Shawshank Redemption, a movie that I admittedly have only seen 45 minutes of (in a Z302 business class lecture no less -- thank you Professor David Rubenstein. I've never given up.). Our team this week, Bigger Dick: Pat Summit or Kevin? (Kevin is the guy who runs trivia at Rocks), was comprised of Gregerson, Christoff, the Brothers Weeser* (minus Greg, of course), and me. Our performance was nothing short of extraordinary. In the 6 rounds of 10 questions, we got 55 right, sweeping the music round and one of the general trivia rounds. Unfortunately there was one other team whose trivia knowledge was on par with us, that is until the sudden-death, 5-question tie-breaking round, which we won handily, thus ensuring 25% off our bill. The other team's choice for a round next week: Kevin Smith movies. In the words of Brodie Bruce, "Fuck you, Fanboy."

Coyotes in the Loop
About two blocks from where I work there is a Quizno's. That fact was relatively unspectacular until yesterday in the early afternoon, when a COYOTE wandered in the front door to greet unsuspecting customers (thanks to Ari for alerting me to this story). Interestingly, the coyote (pronounced "ky-oat") did not want to eat anything, instead choosing to hop into a soft drink cooler and give everyone the stink eye. The look in his eyes suggests that he was unsatisfied with his recently purchased giant magnet and some jet-powered roller skates. Some SoBe Lean oughta do the trick, and I'll take however damn much of it I please.

Weatherman Says It's Gonna Get Hot Tonight
Quotations from the minor hits of Jack Wagner aside, one thing that totally rules about springtime in Chicago -- or really anywhere in the upper Midwest -- is that one day (yesterday) it can be 70 and the next (today) it can be 30 with a windchill of 18. Thanks God. Speaking of God . . .

Abort! Abort!
I hate to get political on GMYH, especially on such a hot-button issue like abortion, but you can thank anti-abortionists for the following semi-rant.

As if the forty-degree temperature drop wasn't enough to make the morning commute angering enough, there were those nutjob anti-abortion folks on the sidewalk near my building, with sandwich boards showing a giant picture of what I assume was supposed to be an aborted fetus, with "Roe v. Wade" in big letters across the top of the sign. It's bad enough that I now have to worry about coyotes when I'm walking around in the Loop, but now this. I'd almost rather encounter a coyote. At least coyotes are rational beings. There are a couple things wrong with these people's approach:

1. It was pretty obvious that the bloody, aborted "fetus" on the signs was a doll of some sort with what I'm guessing was dog's blood covering it. I think they lose a lot of God cred by trying to pass off such a particularly gruesome -- an manufactured -- image as reality.
2. Even if it was a real fetus, it was far too large to have any relation to Roe v. Wade or its progeny, since the Supreme Court's rulings protect a mother's right to choose within the first trimester. This means that the only possibility is that it was a late-term abortion, but those are only allowed in very rare circumstances when the health of the mother is at risk, and that's not really a Roe v. Wade issue so much as a recent issue being pushed by several conservative state legislatures (South Dakota, I'm looking your way) that have enacted (or attempted to enact) a total ban on late-term abortions, with no exception for the health of the mother.

With that in mind, tomorrow I will be standing at the corner of Wacker and Madison with a giant two-sided poster. One side will be entitled, "What if the South Dakota legislature got its way?" It will show a newborn child sitting next to the rotting and bloated corpse of its mother, who died from complications arising during pregnancy that would have been alleviated had she only been allowed to have a late-term abortion. The child will be bawling, not only because its mother is dead, but because its father is long gone, thus meaning that it is now a ward of the state. The other side will be entitled, "A late-term abortion saved my life, allowing me to bring five lives into the world." It will feature a picture of a mother surrounded by her five happy, healthy children to whom she gave birth because she was able to previously invoke the health-of-mother exception, which saved her life, thus allowing her to live to give birth to the person who will cure cancer, the person who will cure AIDS, the person who will develop a way to make dirt edible (thus curing world hunger), the person who will bring everlasting peace to the Middle East, and Jesus Christ. That's right, only because of abortion did the Savior return to Earth to save us. Pretty fucked up, huh?

Again, sorry to get political. Something about a giant placard with a fake dead fetus in the morning really irks me. I don't know why I bother getting so pissed off about this, since I'm barren anyway.

Thank You FCC
The FCC officially stated that the use of cell phones on airplanes is prohibited because there is "insufficient technical information" on whether cell phone usage on planes would adversely affect cellular networks on the ground. (The FAA had already banned cell phone usage to guard against interference with airplanes' navigation and communications systems.) As someone who encounters assholes on their phones commuting for 20-25 minutes at a time on the L, I can only imagine the absolute horror of sitting next to someone for 3 hours who is oblivious to the fact that the whole plane doesn't want to hear their inane conversation.

The Big Six
Yesterday afternoon, Holt emailed several of us a quote from a Q&A from a chat on ESPN.com with Doug Gottlieb, prefacing it with "I hate it when people I dislike say stuff I agree with. He must have forgotten to mention Illinois..." Here is the Q and then the A:

Kenton (Indianapolis): "Doug, everyone has a different opinion regarding how good of a job UK is. In your opinion what are the top 5 coaching jobs in America?"

Doug Gottlieb: "In no particular order there are 6 Super Elite jobs--
UNC
Duke
IU
KU
UCLA
Kentucky

Everything else is a step down."

Because I'm a tool for stats, and I agreed with Gottlieb wholeheartedly, here are some interesting stats about those 6 schools and the Final Four. There have been 69 NCAA tournaments. Between IU, UK, UCLA, Duke, UNC, and Kansas, there are:
-32 NCAA championships (46.38% of the possible titles)
-53 NCAA title game appearances (38.41% of the possible appearances)
-80 Final Fours (28.99% of the possible Final Four spots)

At least one of those 6 teams has made it to the Final Four in all but 16 years, meaning that in 76.81% of the Final Fours, there has been at least one of those teams. 1985 was the last time there was a Final Four without one of those six teams.

JDeez Nuts
Speaking of my fair alma mater, it looks like the student climate has took a turn for the worse at the IU School of Law. Apparently one student broke another student's nose and then posted about it on Facebook (thanks to ATPW for the link). Back in my day, we avoided drinking and/or hanging out with people who hated us and/or repeatedly punched us in the nose. My, how times have changed. Actually, it sounds like the guy who got his nose broken is a bit of a pushover. If anyone broke my nose, I'm pretty sure the first person I would go to would NOT be Dean Fromm. While he is a great guy and he does play a hell of an accordion, the last thing he needs to deal with is some whiny 3L with the backbone of a jellyfish whose "friends" couldn't make it any clearer that they don't want to hang out with him. Instead, I would have gone to the following entities, in this order: (1) the police, (2) a lawyer, (3) the bank. Maybe after that I would have approached Dean Fromm, but only to let him know that I would be endowing a new professorship: The [insert name of guy who punched me] Professor of Personal Injury Law.

[UPDATE: Apparently the person who got punched in the nose by a fellow law student was a female. Thus, the above rant is horribly out of line and yet another in a long line of examples of me putting my foot in my mouth. The fact that a male law student broke a female law student's nose is pretty fucking unbelievable. Dizzy, make that SOB pay. You're right, bar admissions committees don't look very highly on that sort of thing.]

Death of a Legend
The college football community lost one of its great ambassadors today. Former Grambling head coach Eddie Robinson passed away at age 88. For those who don't know about him, he coached Grambling for 57 years, taking it from nothing to a household name, producing over 200 NFL players, breaking the all-time college football coaching wins record (which has since been broken), and helping to break down racial barriers in the process. Anyway, he was a stand-up guy, so please mourn him.

Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza tickets are on sale, for the early-bird price of $165 for the three-day festival (taking place August 3-5 in Grant Park here in Chicago). Pearl Jam has confirmed that it will be one of the headliners (any disparaging or "milquetoast" comments, Anonymous?). Other than that, the rest of the lineup will be announced on April 12, at which time the tickets go up to $195. I bought my ticket already, and I'm pumped. One thing I liked about giving Perry Ferrell $165 for the privilege of seeing 130 bands was that $165 was both the face value and the total. No fees. No service charges. No taxes. Whereas the "$24" tickets I bought for Kings of Leon through Ticketmaster came to over $36 each.

You can buy tickets at http://www.lollapalooza.com/.