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November 26, 2001

Remember how October would never end? Well, November's almost over. How the hell did that happen? Anyway, here's a little something I wrote which calls attention to certain problems in quiz bowl that I think most players will recognize. (Here's a hint: if you don't see yourself in any of these, chances are you're almost all of them.)

November 24, 2001

Whoa, could this be... a new movie review? Incredible.

November 22, 2001

   I was just about to write something about how it was another amusing weekend until I realized that it was in fact not the weekend at all, but rather Wednesday and Thursday. (Which is a really good thing as I'm really tired and I haven't done any homework for Monday yet.)
    But Wednesday and Thursday were fun, spent largely at or en route to/from the U of I (yes, again) where I was producing (sorry, "coordinating the broadcast") today's NU-U of I game. (Yes, we lost, but it was 34-28 instead of 76-3.)
    So most of Wednesday was spent hanging around with Rudnik and Nemo, which when you're requesting people to hang out with is not low on the list. Rudnik, after all, is always a blast, which he most certainly proved by being Mr. Quotable this weekend (see the quotes page for more on that).
    I will here relate two of the more amusing things on the trip. The first is short - it came when we stopped at the Citgo in Rogers Park and the Subway that was right next to the Citgo had a big sign out front consisting of two phrases: "God Bless America" and "Foot Long $2.79."
    The other took place in the hotel room later as Nemo and Rudnik were preparing for the broadcast and I was attempting to glean preparatory tips for the eventual point when I do a football game (which requires way more prep than anything else if only because there are so many more players to know).
    [Rudnik mentions Illinois wide receiver Aaron Moorehead.]
    Me: Craven Moorehead?
    Nemo: Who's Craven Moorehead?
    Me: I am!
    [General confusion ensues as I chuckle.]
The best part, of course, is that Nemo was not just setting me up for this joke but was in fact totally serious, as neither he nor Rudnik seemed to have heard the joke name "Craven Moorehead" before.

One other thing to note is that despite the plans Halling and I had to go to Chipotle, it, as almost everything else in Evanston, was closed. Mendelson said that exactly three restaurants were open: The Keg (is that really a restaurant?), the Coaches' Cafe, and Burger King (which, so far as I can tell, has yet to close, ever). Though I didn't see the Keg, he was right about the rest of it. Halling and I ended up going to Coaches' Cafe, which was more expensive than either Chipotle or the King would have been. On the other hand, we actually got to eat turkey, rather than suffering the ignominy of having to say, "For Thanksgiving dinner I had a Shrek Sourdough Burger" (not that I would ever even consider ordering that).

One last thing: Rudnik's persistence in singing to me, "Because I fell in love... with the girl at the geek bowl" (because 1. he knows I like Blink 182; 2. he knows I do quiz bowl; 3. he likes to needle me by calling it geek bowl even though he used to play it in high school) led me to actually write a song like that (because so long as there's going to be one, it might as well make sense, sort of). You can read it here if you like.

November 20, 2001

   After another stupidly late night (note to self: in future, read books before night before test), it's another tired day, only this time I'm not sure I feel like napping (and since it's already 2:30, that's become sort of a dicey proposition anyway).
    New Top 20 poll and new Weekly Ten (full of Weezer; you can thank Leah for that, having given me both Pinkerton and the Green Album on one handy CD) are up. I'd give you links here but I'm really lazy so I'm making you do the work. Just go to the top of the page. (The Weekly Ten is under Lists on the off chance that you forgot and/or couldn't guess.)
    No big-time sleep for another couple days yet, but man, is this weekend going to rule. No quiz bowl, no game (since it's on Thursday) - just sleeping till 3 every day. Ahhhhh.

November 19, 2001

In what was probably not a good way to end the weekend, I was up quite late last night finishing my paper. I also learned that it's really hard to go over time management in my head at 6:30 in the morning when I've only been asleep for two hours.
Results from the Illinois Novice Tournament are up.

November 18, 2001

Weekend. Damn. There will be results up from the Illinois Novice Tournament as soon as I have some time to spare (tonight is not that time); look for that within the next couple of days (if you actually care).
Otherwise, pretty much all I did this weekend was not work. Oh, well, I did not work in a pleasant matter by venturing into the city with Jan to hang out with Leah at the Art Institute. We also went to Water Tower Place and the Magnificent Mile, where Leah dragged us into various stores, making us look like complete tools (which we pretty much were, so at least it was accurate). At least we managed to keep her from dragging us into Victoria's Secret. And she gave me a CD with Weezer's Green Album and Pinkerton on it, thus saving me a bunch of money and breaking several copyright laws.

November 12, 2001

Bah. This week is shaping up to one of the most horrible in recent memory, if only because of the sheer quantities of work (papers due Friday and next Monday) that will be required. At least our TRASH regionals win (see below) dulls the pain a bit, but that won't last long and my sleep schedule is likely to kill me. I looked it up and aside from possibly squeezing in naps here and there (which I'm preparing to do as I write this), I can't really catch up on sleep until the night of the 20th, still well over a week away. Perhaps I can go to bed at three pm on Friday in anticipation of getting up at four for JRBird, but just like when I tried to do that for ACF, it may not really happen. I actually wasn't too bad on Saturday having gotten more than eight hours of sleep on Friday night, which was good since I did about seven hours of driving with only one or two breaks. But then, as is wont to happen on quiz bowl trips, I only got five and change on Saturday night, though our lack of sleep as a team clearly did not hinder our Sunday performance.
To sum up, I'm tired as all hell. I think I said that yesterday night, possibly in exactly as many words (this is in fact the case as I scroll down to check). So I'm going to take a nap now. And Dave, I wasn't here on Saturday, so I couldn't very well give you a birthday shout-out, now could I? (And by the way, you're going down in Lambeau.)

November 12, 2001

Up and down weekend. On the one hand, we won TRASH Regionals at UMTC, thus giving us an automatic bid to TRASHionals (which I was really hoping to go back to). On the other hand, the Bears lost, Northwestern got slaughtered, I got next to no work done and I'm tired as all hell. With that in mind, the rest of the week may be a little light on this page. But you can at least read about TRASH.

November 8, 2001

Reward the fruits of my labor by checking out this year's BigFlax.com College Bowl Challenge logo.

November 7, 2001

Changes in previous college football news.

1. The poll will be up shortly, with a much-adjusted cast list. Ugh. But at least it's up.

2. The qualifications will be expanded to all current and former NU students for the Bowl Challenge, as I have been told by some current NU students that some former NU students probably want in. This could be really bitchin'.

November 6, 2001

College football news to report.

1. There will be no poll this week, regrettably. Why? Because I only got five polls. Two of you begged out with at least decent excuses, but I should have two more polls right now and I don't. Anyway, due to the sabotaging of the poll by a certain jackass, I can't put up a five-person poll - it'll be grossly inaccurate.
2. The BigFlax.com College Bowl Challenge is rapidly approaching. As you may recall last year, the contest was restricted to the people in my suite. This year, however, I'm opening it wide. While I know Drew and possibly some of the others will bitch about this, tough. I always say, the more, the merrier. It won't go all the way wide, though - I am restricting it to current Northwestern students. (Sorry.) All those of you interested in joining the contest click here to e-mail me, at which point I will add you to the list (from which you will get mailings regarding the contest).

November 5, 2001

Could yesterday have been any better in the sports world? The Bears come back from the absolute brink (how many times do you see a team win after trailing by 14 points with less than 40 seconds to play?) to win on yet another Mike Brown overtime interception return. Oh yeah, and some baseball team I don't really like saw their ace reliever totally choke away the World Series.

In unrelated news, happy birthday, Mom.

November 4, 2001

   What a bizarre weekend in college football. 12 games (including BYU's on Thursday) saw at least one team score 50 points or more (and this doesn't even include another four games in which at least 45 was scored by one team). What's more, only one conference saw none of its teams participate in one such game (the Pac Ten) and only one other saw none of its teams come out on the winning end of such an affair (the Mid-American).
    One such game occurred in the Big Ten, when Northwestern put on what appeared to be a repeat of its 1998 loss to Purdue as Indiana - Indiana??? - beat us 56-21 in Bloomington. This game was so bad most people around here seem to be pretending it never happened.
    As for the other eleven games?
    1. ACC - NC State 55, Duke 13
    2. Big 12 - Nebraska 51, Kansas 7
    3. Big 12 - Oklahoma 58, Tulsa (a WAC team) 0
    4. Big East - West Virginia 80, Rutgers 7
    5. CUSA - Louisville 52, Tulane 7
    6. Ind - Central Florida 57, Akron (a MAC team) 17
    7. MWC - BYU 56, Colorado State 34
    8. SEC - Florida 71, Vanderbilt 13
    9. Sun Belt - Middle Tennessee State 54, Arkansas 6
    10. WAC - Fresno State 52, Rice 24
    11. SEC - Arkansas 58, Mississippi 56

I give you the Arkansas-Mississippi game last because it is notable that this game was won in the seventh overtime when Mississippi failed a two-point conversion. What makes this so amazing is not that seven overtimes is a Division I record (which it is, eclipsing the old record of six, not to mention simultaneously obliterating the I-A record of four), but that it got that far despite the rule that says after the second OT, teams have to start going for two after scoring a touchdown. The rule was added pretty soon after overtime was (OT was added in 1995 because of the infamous 31-31 UF-FSU tie in '94; the rule was added in 1996 because of all the long I-AA games played in 1995, if I remember correctly), and yet Arkansas and Mississippi still managed to go seven.

November 3, 2001

Want to know why only hardcore lit, philosophy, and occasionally history and science guys like ACF? Here are the results of our ill-fated trip down to Champaign for the ACF Fall tournament, which required me to get up at four am and proceed to answer a total of 16 questions all day.

November 2, 2001

   I can't believe it's November. Partially because it didn't seem like October would ever end. Look at last month's updates (below), and tell it didn't feel more like two months between the October 1 update and the October 31 one.
    It's also midterm season. I already had one in Russian Lit (A-, thankyouverymuch) and today I had one in Shakespeare, along with a paper that basically functioned as a midterm due in Media Contexts. In other words, I got four hours of sleep last night.
    Which is just as well, since I have to get up at four - four! - tomorrow morning to head down to Illinois for ACF Fall. Yeah, ACF is hard as all hell, but I'm trying to go to as many tournaments as possible, and I've never really played this format before. I also can't remember having to get up that early since I had to get up at 3:30 the day after the Super Bowl (SBXXXI) to make it to the Mobile Airport. Unlike then, though, I'm going to go to sleep at a nice early hour tonight (think eight), which hopefully will leave me refreshed in the morning, something I'm going to have to be to play a format I probably have no business playing in the first place. (And yes, results will be up when I get back.)

There's more! View last month's updates.

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This page last updated: Monday, April 15, 2002 08:12:17 PM