Tourney Time

People love college sports. They love it for any number of reasons. The purity of the sport, the passion, athletes giving it everything they have simply for the love of the game. All those great cliches. But what is at the heart of it all? What is the essence of what makes the college game so great? Gambling, that's what.

• Fact: Over 200 billion brackets were filled out last week for the NCAA Tournament.*


• Fact: I love gambling.**

Since I love gambling and this is the single greatest gambling weekend of the year I needed to fully immerse myself. I took Friday off for 32 games and at least 30 hours of college basketball. It was going to awesome. It was a complete disaster. I've never seen anything like it. Just dagger after dagger. It was brutal. Let's start with the brackets, here are the two I have money on:

The are both a mess, but the second one is really horrible. USC. What was I thinking? Who's USC's favorite player? OJ Mayo. What's my least favorite food ever. Mayonaisse. I would I pick a team centered around the worst condiment in the world for the Final Four. No matter how delicious orange juice is it does not counteract the disgustingness of Mayo. I should know better than that. But it got worse when I started betting on individual games. I lost 19 of 25 bets. I wasn't even sure that was mathematically possible. Here are a few examples of a typical bet for me this weekend:

• Butler against Tennessee. I parlayed Butler +4.5 and the over (140). Butler is down by 3, with the ball, with less than 15 seconds left. Pretty much a lock. There are three realistic scenarios normally, Butler makes a two, a three at the buzzer, or miss a shot as time runs out. Either way I win. What happens? Butler misses a shot with less than three seconds, Tennessee rebounds. Game over, I win. Oops, Butler commits a pointless foul when the game is essentially over, Tennessee hits two free throws, wins by 5, I lose. Dammit.
• I have Clemson at -6. They're winning by 19 in the second half and still manage to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.
• Oregon +2.5. Up by 12 late in the second half, they lost by 7. Welcome to my life.

Fortunately I don't technically have a "gambling problem". I only lost $100, but still what a bunch of crap. I hate college basketball.

*Not an actual fact

**Actual fact

Mustache Day

Hey. Happy Mustache Day! It's a very exciting day for me, this is easily my best mustache ever. I look like I'm heading to bike week. Or a Village People concert. Either way it looks awesome. Go here and vote for the best mustache.

TWSSF

I wish I had something I could tell you guys. Some excuse I could give you as to why you've been deprived of That's What She Said Friday for the last few weeks but there isn't. I can lie to you guys. Truth is I just didn't feel like it. As you all know I'm very lazy, but I'm back. This week I'll turn it over to McSweeney's, becuase they're much funnier than myself. Check it out.

Beating a Dead Horse

Let's talk about the most interesting of subjects: the weather. Here's a brief description of the conditions yesterday:

Not under a bridge:

Mostly sunny, temperature's in the low 60's with a light breeze. A beautiful day if there ever was one.

Under a bridge:

Dark, frigid, gale force winds.

The section of 395 I was working under yesterday happen to run alongside a small park in Federal Hill. I was wearing four layers of shirt, gloves, and a winter hat and was freezing my ass off. 50 yards away was a guy playing tennis in shorts and a t-shirt. And to think I used enjoy shade. If I was a little closer I would have thrown one of the chunks of concrete falling from the bridge* at him because I was so bitter about his carefree, whimsical lifestyle. Seriously, who's playing tennis at noon on a Wednesday and where do I sign up?

Fortunately I'm back in the office for the rest of the week. For all those who find themselves complaining about rotting away in a cubicle working for the man for the rest of thier lives, cherish it, if not you could find yourself stuck in the bucket of a lift truck 80 feet in the air when the controls stop working and you have to hang out for like 45 minutes until someone can come and get you down. It's a harrowing experience.

*One of the few fun things about this job is knocking concrete off of a bridge. I've probably knocked a solid 50 square feet of failing concrete off of the various bridges of Interstate 395 so far. Enjoy that fact next time your driving into town for an Orioles game. Don't worry, it's still structuraly sound. Or is it?

Spreading the Word

This one is for the dozens of people who found my blog via Google searching for certain information on a serious subject only to be left very, very dissappointed: yes Patrick Swayze does have pancreatic cancer. Here's a real story about it. Sorry my love of She's Like the Wind lead you here instead of what you were actually searching for.