Stand-Up Comedy Hall of Fame

The passing of George Carlin first made me think of how shocking his "seven words you can't say on television" routine seemed at the time and how thoroughly out of date it is now. I think at least three of the seven (#1, #2 and #7, if I remember the order right) have made it onto normal network TV -- not some live show, as part of a script -- and the other night we were flipping around and found some bizarre Spike TV awards show where the apparent goal was to drive censors insane. Steve Carell -- nice, mild Steve Carell -- gave an acceptance speech where he said dirty words #3, #5 and #6. Repeatedly. With relish. Yes, he was bleeped out, but anyone over age 5 knew exactly what he was saying.

What I always wonder, in those moments, is what deaf people are thinking when they come across something like that. If you're reading lips, isn't it safe to assume that the world has gone completely down the sewer?

(By the way, the only TV instance I know about involving dirty word #4 -- The Word That Dare Not Speak Its Name -- is when Jane Fonda said it on the "Today" show a few months ago. It's out there if you want to see. I am not about to link to it. I believe that's the definition of Not Safe For Work.)

Beyond the decline of Western civilization, what Carlin made me think about is where he falls in the Stand-Up Comedy Hall of Fame.

To me there is one and only one unanimous selection. Richard Pryor is Babe Ruth (shattered all known boundaries of his field) plus Jackie Robinson (crossed racial lines because he was so good, white audiences had to respect him). His first movie -- well, it's not really a movie, it's just his stand-up routine on film -- is the single funniest thing I've ever seen.

From Richard on down it's sort of a pyramid. My next group: Johnny Carson, Robin Williams (although he's got the Willie Mays thing of playing far past his prime), Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Steven Wright.

After that I'd put in Steve Martin, Sam Kinison (guilty pleasure), Chris Rock, Bill Hicks, and, I swear, the early Dennis Miller. I went with a bunch of friends to see him at Wake Forest maybe 15 years ago and we were laughing so hard we needed those little drop-down oxygen masks they have in case your plane is about to crash. Dennis has gone all Fox News now, which is fine, but he is no longer funny, which is not fine at all.

Never, ever, ever in my Comedians Hall of Fame: Andrew Dice Clay.

This is all off the top of my head so of course I'm missing some -- Dave Chappelle, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby... Who else you got?

While you're thinking about it, here's George Carlin at his (non-dirty) best, on baseball vs. football.

Tell me about... your favorite photo

My new Web crush is The Big Picture, a Boston Globe blog that compiles stunning photos on any given subject (Mars, life in Iraq, the Celtics' victory party) and displays them full-screen and in high resolution. It's just spectacular. And it made me think how much the right photo can mean to us.

There's a photo of me, my mom and my dad that we took one year for our church directory. The image itself is nothing special (although it is a rare moment of me in coat and tie) but it's a moment to hold onto -- my dad was alive and healthy, for one thing. He didn't become a father until he was 49 and you can see he's proud of his little family. I'm pretty sure I was in high school then and the biggest drama of my life was whether I would get to make out with a girl in the back of the bus on the way home from the debate tournament. I'm smiling pretty big in the photo so I'm guessing it had happened by then.

It also turns out that there are a lot of pictures of me and my mom, or me and my dad, and of course there are lots of pictures of my mom and dad, but not that many of the three of us together. So it's special that way too.

So... tell me about a photo that means something in your life. Doesn't have to be a family photo -- doesn't even have to be a photo that you're in, or that you took. Just something that you keep somewhere special.

And really, before you log off, go look at those Mars photos.

The author we can't stop reading

We didn't get much done around the house this weekend because Lee Child has a new book out. I stopped by the bookstore Friday night, bought a copy, walked in the front door, said "This is how much I love you" and handed it to my wife to read first.

I'm romantic that way.

Lee Child will not be winning the Nobel Prize for literature. He writes thrillers. But they are tremendous thrillers -- smart, sexy, powerful, thoughtful. The hero, Jack Reacher, has the skills of Jason Bourne and the body of Howie Long. He roams the country with nothing more than an ATM card and a toothbrush. If people would just leave him alone, things would be fine. People tend not to leave him alone. Broken bones result.

Genre books -- mysteries, thrillers, horror, Westerns -- are tricky business. They have to feel familiar and surprise you at the same time. That's a high degree of difficulty and the reason why the authors who get it right can sleep on stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

The single greatest blurb in the history of books was written for Lee Child by Malcolm Gladwell, who has written some great books himself. It captures exactly how I feel. Here's the blurb:

"I started out reading Lee Child in paperback. Then I realized I couldn't wait and started buying his books in hardcover. Now I call around to my publishing friends, and make them send me the galleys. My next step is to break into Lee Child's house and watch over his shoulder while he types. "

If I ever write a book I'll be begging Malcolm Gladwell for a blurb.

Our household book report on Lee's latest, "Nothing to Lose": Wife started Friday night and finished Saturday afternoon. I started Saturday night and finished Sunday afternoon. It was a great weekend.

Obama's veep

Lord knows I'm no expert on politics (or anything else, possibly excepting obscure Southern rock and pro wrestling) but every so often my spidey sense starts tingling... and so today I'm here to tell you Barack Obama's pick for vice president. Obama himself might not know it yet but this is where he'll end up.

Let me give you the quick odds for some other potential VP candidates:

Joe Biden -- 25 to 1
Evan Bayh -- 30 to 1
Sam Nunn -- 50 to 1
Dick Cheney -- 1,000,000,000 to 1
Hillary Clinton -- 1,000,000,001 to 1

There is NO WAY that Obama will pick Hillary as vice president. She would double his negatives. She would bring Bill back to the White House, which would be terrible news for everyone except the editors of the National Enquirer. And most of the Hillary supporters who are furious today, vowing that they'll vote for John McCain over Obama, will step into the voting booth in November and realize that, hey, Obama is a Democrat and McCain is a Republican.

Obama needs a conservative Democrat, someone who is tough on national defense and can appeal to some of the blue-collar voters who aren't in love with Obama yet.

Why, look -- here's a Democrat who used to be a Republican, a Vietnam vet who earned two Purple Hearts, and a strong defender of gun ownership. Plus he coincidentally has a new political book titled "A Time To Fight."

Ladies and gentlemen, Jim Webb, senator from Virginia and soon to be your Democratic vice-presidential candidate. I'd bet the contents of my wallet* on it.

*Current contents of my wallet -- $4 and a Harris Teeter VIC card.

Hillary will make nice and campaign for Obama and then go off and plan her next move. Bill... well, it looks like he's keeping busy.

Tell me about... your first kiss

The other day I was watching this fascinating talk by Jonathan Harris, a computer scientist and artist who has written brilliant programs that take the temperature of the Internet -- what people are feeling, thinking, writing about at any given moment.

One of the thing he says in the talk is that the same touchstones come up over and over again -- stories from childhood, weddings, deaths, the things that all of us experience in one way or another. We love to tell our own stories, not only because those stories helped form us but because they connect us to one another. Sometimes just telling a tiny part of your story is enough, which is the genius behind sites like PostSecret (warning: If you've never visited PostSecret before, prepare to spend at least an hour there.)

All this is an overlong way of introducing something I'd like to try on this blog every so often. For now I'm calling it "Tell me about..." but holler if you've got a better title. I'll throw out a common experience, and you tell your story in the comments.

Here's the first: Tell me about... your first kiss.

Go.

Readin' and rockin'

If you're free tonight, swing by the Visulite Theatre at 7:30 for the launch party for the new book "Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas." There's music from Steve Stoeckel, the Local Tomatoes and the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz, plus readings from John Grooms, Sheila Saints and yours truly. I have made the dubious decision to read an essay that reveals my shameful connection to the Captain and Tennille. Come at your own risk.

My essay is (at least partly) about how you hang onto some of the music you loved as a kid. I wasn't exactly a kid when this came out -- I was 19 -- but it was on MTV, when MTV still mattered, and when I was 13 or 14 and we didn't have cable there was nothing better than going to my friend Virgil's house and gorging on MTV. I heard this on the radio the other day and it all came rushing back. So feel free to add your guilty childhood pleasures in the comments, but for now, you know this much is true:

E-mail disaster stories

I've been meaning to write about how someone on the Hillary Clinton campaign has a fine future in telemarketing. During the run-up to the N.C. primary, Clinton sent more e-mails than the Nigerian finance minister or even the nice people offering natural male enhancement.

Some days I'd get eight or nine e-mails from the Clinton folks, notifying me of everything from Maya Angelou's endorsement to a Chelsea Clinton appearance with the singer Sophie B. Hawkins (you might remember her from the song "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover", although I'm not sure that's quite as good as Barack Obama getting the nod from Bruce Springsteen).

Reporters tend to get more of this stuff than regular voters, but I'm wondering how many of you got peppered with Hillary e-mails -- and whether, after a while, they were more annoying than energizing.

(The e-mails from the Obama campaign always ended up getting caught in my spam filter. Make any symbolic point you'd like from that.)

Somehow this dovetails with this Freakonomics post about e-mails that get sent to the wrong person with disastrous results.

When I was at my first job we had a primitive version of e-mail that assigned each person in the office a three-digit number -- to send that person a message, you sent it to the number. I was on the night shift and was dating a co-worker. I wrote her a note -- nothing racy, something like "can't wait to get together after work" -- punched in her three-digit number and hit send.

Except it wasn't her three-digit number. It was the three-digit number that sent a message to the whole newsroom.

Did I mention that we had computers that beeped when you got a message?

One by one, I heard every computer start beeping... and then saw every person in the newsroom peering over their cubicles at me.

Not good times.

So what's your biggest e-mail horror story? Confess away in the comments.

I'm on XM shortly

Sometime around 12:05 p.m. I'm scheduled to be interviewed on XM satellite radio's POTUS '08 channel (POTUS being the acronym for "president of the United States"). I think we'll be talking about the Sunday package where we talked to 100 voters about the issues that are motivating them in this election.

This will also give you with satellite radio the chance to hear my voice, which I would describe as "obscene phone caller in training." Sorry, it's all I've got.

Street music

One of my ironclad rules of life is, always give some money to the street musician. Even if it's a bad street musician. It takes guts to stand out there and play your songs and have people instantly pass judgment on you. There's also the problem of, well, being out on the street. One time in New Orleans I saw a drunk guy come up to a sax player and holler, "I'll give you 20 bucks if you play 'Flight of the Bumblebee!'"

The sax player ignored him.

The drunk guy said, "I'll give you FIFTY bucks if you play 'Flight of the Bumblebee!'"

The sax guy glanced up, stopped his song and broke into a perfect version of "Flight of the Bumblebee." The crowd went nuts and the drunk guy dutifully tossed his 50 bucks in the jar.

I love a good street musician.

A couple of things lately made me think about this. Saturday morning we stopped by Nova's Bakery on Central Avenue and a kid was playing the violin inside. He was doing fine as it was, but then he took it over the top -- he busted out "Sweet Child of Mine."

Nothing like hearing a little Slash on the fiddle.

The other thing was that we're now just a few days away from the Bruce Springsteen concert at the arena (you can still get tickets!) and so I've been dredging YouTube for clips. Diehard Bruce fans will have seen this one, but it's still my favorite -- the Boss joining a street musician in Copenhagen for a version of "The River":




Wonder if Bruce made a few extra bucks that day.

Best game ever

Nope, not Kansas over Memphis. (And definitely not Kansas over UNC.) This was an ordinary Little League game in California that turned into -- well, watch:



And read the background, which makes it even better. (The leader of this group is a guy named Charlie Todd, who grew up in Columbia and went to UNC. I'm guessing he was fun to hang out with in college.)

The whole wonderful stunt made me think of this question: Have you ever just stumbled into something where you had no idea what was going on, but it turned out to be really cool and special?

Back in my college days we went bar-hopping in Atlanta one night and ended up riding through downtown in my white 1971 Buick LeSabre, a/k/a The White Shadow. Downtown was deserted. We pulled up to a red light. I looked left. Nothing. I looked right.

There was a tank in the street.

Clearly, the Russians had taken over the country while we had been out at the bars. We were completely freaked out for about 10 seconds... until we saw all the floodlights and all the people milling around. It turned out that Chuck Norris was making a movie (the immortal "Invasion U.S.A.") and 3 a.m. was the only time you could roll a tank through the middle of downtown Atlanta.

So we hung around awhile and watched. A drunk guy showed up and wanted to fight Chuck. Security hauled him away. Eventually we headed back home, feeling the same way I suspect those Little Leaguers felt -- a little confused, a little giddy, with a great story to tell.

So: Ever have one of those days that ended up turning into something surreal? Let's hear it in the comments.

NCAA Liveblog 10: Wrapping it up

We're down to one game now (Stanford-Cornell) and I've had roughly 179 glasses of tea. It's time to head home.

This has been a blast -- thanks to all of you from around the country who gave this a read and maybe dropped in a comment or two. (Feel free to continue the debate on tipping now playing on Liveblog 7.)

So let me leave the rest to you. What's your favorite moment ever from the NCAA tournament? The best game you ever saw, the best game your favorite team played -- whatever it is, let's hear it in the comments. And feel free to brag on your brackets. (I will do no bragging, considering I currently sit at 4-3 and had Baylor in the Sweet 16. Ouch.)

Take it away, y'all. This was great fun.

NCAA Liveblog 9: A Scoreboard story

All the games are blowouts right now -- if you picked Pitt, Purdue and UNLV, good for you -- so I'm going to tell my favorite tournament story. I think I've told this one before, but this is the right time for it.

There used to be a great sports bar called the Scoreboard out on Independence Boulevard. One year I had some friends in town and we went over to watch the tournament. This happened to be 1992 and the game we sat down to watch happened to be Duke-Kentucky.

Basketball fans will recognize this as one of the greatest games of all time.

I was in the rare position of hating both teams, but I had to root for someone, so I went with my SEC roots and picked Kentucky. This put me in the minority because about 80 percent of the people in the bar were rabid Duke fans. (Most of the rest were rabid Carolina fans who of course rooted for Kentucky to win and the Duke players to be swallowed up by a hole in the floor.)

There was one Duke fan who was especially obnoxious. Every time Duke made a good play he would turn to us and scream creative four-letter words, often accompanied by one-finger gestures. Just a class act all around.

Toward the end of the game, Duke went ahead and there was a timeout and this guy did a victory lap inside the Scoreboard, flipping off us Kentucky fans along the way.

So now we're late in overtime -- it's clear now that this is a FANTASTIC game -- and a Kentucky player throws in an off-balance prayer to put Kentucky in the lead with 2.1 seconds left. I am now the biggest Kentucky fan in the world. All of us newly minted Kentucky fans are taunting this guy, and he is devastated. He puts his head down for a second. And then he walks out of the bar.

Let me repeat: He walks out of the bar.

You might have heard what happened next.

Grant Hill threw the long baseball pass to Christian Laettner, and Laettner turned and jumped, and he buried the jumper at the buzzer to win the greatest game of all time for Duke.

The obnoxious guy never saw it.

I always wonder how he found out what happened. Maybe he walked out of the bar and decided to shun sports and bought a ticket to Tanzania and became a missionary. Maybe to this day he still doesn't know that Duke won.

One can only hope.

NCAA Liveblog 8: Pranking Michael Jordan

When you're watching multiple TVs at once you get multiple commercials at once. And so just this afternoon I've seen these Michael Jordan/Cuba Gooding Jr. commercials about 25 times.

I've come to the conclusion that somebody with Hanes is playing a gigantic prank on Michael Jordan.

The main commercial features MJ walking into Cuba's dressing room to find Cuba wearing just his underwear and a T-shirt, looking at a picture of MJ, and holding a basketball in front of his crotch.

This is the follow-up to a commercial where Cuba bursts into a room where MJ is mingling with some fans and yells, "Michael! I'm wearing your underwear!"

And THAT is the follow-up to a commercial where Kevin Bacon is lounging around his apartment, shooting wads of paper at a trash can, only to have MJ come out of nowhere and swat the paper onto the floor.

The message of this ad campaign:

1. MJ and Kevin Bacon appear to be roommates.

2. MJ and Cuba Gooding Jr. have an unusually close relationship.

3. If you and MJ become good friends, he will buy you underwear.

4. MJ litters.

The one thing I am sure of is that Michael Jordan does not watch TV. Because if MJ ever saw one of these commercials he would immediately fire his agent and find out if he could sue Hanes for making the worst ads in the history of television. Also he would probably have Cuba Gooding Jr. killed.

It is sad to see Air Jordan become Breathable Cotton Blend Jordan. But at least that leaves him a lot of time to put in a full effort as head of basketball operations for the Bobcats.

Oh, wait.

Game updates: It's Blowout City. Pitt up 24 on Oral Roberts, UNLV up 18 on Kent State, Purdue up 17 on Baylor. Marquette-Kentucky is the only game even close to close -- Marquette's up 8 without about two minutes left. But Cornell-Stanford tips off in 10 minutes. Play on!

NCAA Liveblog 7: The waitress' view

My waitress here at Jocks & Jills is a lovely woman named Teri. You think you pull long hours? She signed up for a double shift today to make a few extra bucks. So productivity is down in offices all over America because people are watching the games, but on the other hand, waitresses get a windfall. So maybe it's a wash.

My mom was a waitress, which means two things: 1) I'm a big tipper, and 2) when I was in high school, my allowance was always a stack of dollar bills. I was the only 14-year-old in town fully equipped to go to a strip club.

Anyway, I watch waitresses. Teri is good. She regularly checks in but she never hovers. She'll tell you what's good on the menu and what's not. And she always calls you "hon."

She normally works the night shift because day-shift customers are stingy tippers. She pulls out a ticket that came to more than $50 and looks at the tip: $4.53. "At night the tip would be twice that much," she says. "We routinely get 15 or 20 bucks."

It's almost 3:30 p.m. and the crowd has thinned a little but it's still fairly crowded -- way more than a normal Thursday afternoon. Even better, Duke plays tonight. Big tips await.

Score updates: Marquette leads Kentucky by 2. Purdue leads Baylor by 2. UNLV pounding Kent State, 18-6. Pitt up 2 on Oral Roberts.

In case the games get boring, here's a diversion: my good friend Joe Posnanski's greatest screw-ups. Everyone in the newspaper business has some of these stories. Maybe at some point I'll devote a post to the greatest headline in Charlotte newspaper history. It involves the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.

UPDATE: I can't believe I didn't ask Teri the key question of the tournament. But she came back around and I had a chance for the follow-up.

So who tips better, Carolina fans or Duke fans?

"Carolina fans," Teri says. "No question."

NCAA Liveblog 6: Pleasure units

Scott Adams, the guy who draws "Dilbert," has a theory in one of his books that people survive on pleasure units -- that we all get pleasure out of certain things, and that we arrange our daily lives to accumulate the number of pleasure units we need to get us to the next day.

My alma mater gave me a big old stack of pleasure units today.

Georgia didn't win -- they went down 73-61 to Xavier -- but they led most of the game, and they made an incredible run just to get to the tournament, and they made us proud. (Georgia basketball is not exactly a proud tradition -- we're the school that gave our basketball players quizzes such as, "How many points in a three-point basket?")

For so many of us, sports is a big source of pleasure units. It's almost better if you know that the score really doesn't matter in the scope of the real world; not mattering means you can cheer as loud as you want and scream at the refs and fall on the floor in a heap when your team makes the shot at the buzzer. Loving sports means letting yourself go. And not much in the world is more pleasurable than that.

The first set of games is over -- congrats to Xavier, Kansas and Michigan State. And congrats to those of you who had all three in your pool (which would be pretty much everyone but me). The next slate of games has already started. Sit back and enjoy.

NCAA Liveblog 5: Us and our teams

So I'm sitting here rooting my guts out for a group of young men that I've never met and most likely never will meet.

All we have in common is that they are attending the University of Georgia, where I went to school more than 20 years ago. I don't have a clue if they share my values or my political views. I have no idea if we would get along for five minutes in the same room. But for the 40 minutes of this basketball game, they own my heart.

It sounds sort of pathetic when I say it like that.

But of course most of us have our teams, and they matter way more than any rational mind would think they should. In fact I'd say that our home teams matter even more these days, when we're all so spread out and everybody moves around so much. When I lived in Augusta, rooting for UGA was fun. Now that I'm two states away, it's more than that. It's something that draws me back home.

Already today I've heard from people living out in Arizona and out in L.A., where the games started at 9 in the morning. And I know as I write this that my buddy in Indianapolis is watching this, and probably my buddy in Japan too, although God knows what time it is over there. And if Georgia should pull the upset, we'll all be in touch and it'll be just like that night in our freshman year when we beat Kentucky and stayed up all night.

Well, WE didn't beat Kentucky. But you know what I mean.

Scoring update: Kansas up by 27. Michigan State up 15. Dawgs up by 7 with nine minutes left. Gulp.

NCAA Liveblog 4: Working man's lunch

Based on a quick survey of outfits, I'd say about 90 percent of the folks here in the sports bar are here on a workday.

I see lots of company ID badges on those cloth lanyards that are part of the 21st-century corporate worker's daily ensemble. But in a sports bar, nobody makes fun of you for having to wear an ID badge on a lanyard. Just the opposite -- it's a badge of honor. You're the guy who stuck it to the Man by sneaking out to catch some basketball at lunch.

Those guys, like me, are drinking soft -- tea or water or Cokes. The guys at the bar are wearing track suits and knocking back Bud Lights. Let's be charitable and say they probably work the night shift.

I think I mentioned that I can see 36 TVs from my post here at Jocks & Jills. Most of them are showing the three tournament games currently being played. A few show various channels from the ESPN universe. One TV is tuned to CNN. I'm not sure who would come to a sports bar to watch CNN with the sound off. I'm also not sure I'd like to meet that person.

Your scoring update: Kansas up 23 at halftime -- bye-bye, Portland State. Michigan State up nine on Temple. And your Georgia Bulldogs up 35-26 on Xavier. I am now officially afraid to watch the second half.

NCAA Liveblog 3: Hanging in there

Portland State is sort of hanging with Kansas -- they're only down six. Wait, now it's nine. Somehow six qualifies as "hanging" but nine does not.

Is there anything better in the tournament when the little school keeps the game close, then all of a sudden there's maybe 5 minutes left, and some kid who will never again play competitive basketball beyond his church league somehow drains a three, and the crowd is into it and the announcers are into it and you think this is it, it could really happen?

There are so many places in life where the underdog never wins, where the underdog basically CAN'T win. This is one of the reasons to love the tournament. Because sometimes the underdog does win. And in these first two days, game after game, the little guys hang in there.

Of course, in the time it took me to write that, Portland State went from down nine to down 18.

But in other news, Georgia leads Xavier by three near the end of the half.

Live the dream, baby.

NCAA Liveblog 2: Timeshifting

Right on the dot at 12:20 p.m., CBS shows The Montage: Jim Valvano looking for a hug. Christian Laettner making The Shot. That coach for Hampton wiggling like a bug as his player lifts him off the ground.

Goosebumps.

Jocks & Jills is two-thirds full and I can see three guys with laptops and half a dozen on their cell phones. I've heard that people occasionally wager on these games. Not anyone that I know, of course, but maybe you know someone.

We also have a case of the Sports Bar Time Shift, which happens when one TV is showing the over-the-air broadcast of a game and another TV is showing the satellite feed. There's about a three-second delay from one screen to the next, which is really weird if you can see them both. And the screen on the delay is also the big, hi-def screen -- so you end up either watching the tiny screen where the action happens first, or twisting around in your seat so you DON'T see it.

Forget those investment-firm buyouts. This is the sort of thing the federal government should be trying to fix.

Your first score update: Georgia 11, Xavier 8. I really should just leave right now.

NCAA Liveblog 1: Christmas in March

From where I'm sitting I can see 36 TV screens. A nice woman keeps bringing me sweet tea. My NCAA bracket is spread out before me. And the first games of the best two days in sports are about to begin.

Is this heaven?

No, it's a sports bar.

I'm in the Jocks & Jills on Tyvola Road, across from the old Coliseum (or, to be exact, the pile of rubble that used to be the old Coliseum). I'll be here for the next six hours or so, liveblogging two sets of games.

The good things about this gig:

-- Somehow, I'm getting to paid to do this.
-- Plus I think I'll get to expense out some chicken wings.

The bad things about this gig:

-- Charlotte Observer policy won't let me drink beer on the job.
-- Charlotte Observer policy definitely won't let me expense out beer on the job.
-- Charlotte Observer policy most definitely won't let me expense out tequila shots on the job.

So, as you can see, I am suffering here. That's OK. I can take it. The first games are about to begin, starting with my beloved Georgia Bulldogs facing off against mighty Xavier. Of course I have picked the Dawgs to win, because one of the great things about the tournament is that insane picks are always encouraged and sometimes rewarded. We shall see.

I'll be posting regular updates, so keep dropping by. Also post any NCAA thoughts in the comments, especially on the broadcasting -- I'm not sure I'll be able to hear the announcers here. Which is not such a bad thing unless the announcer is the brilliant Gus Johnson.

And if you're somewhere near Tyvola Road, come see me. I'll buy you a drink. But probably not a tequila shot.