Nine Straight

OK, so this was a tense day. Let's start with the good part:



14-9 Michigan over Penn State. That's nine in a row, you nitty kitties!

OK, now the frustrating part. That game was supposed to be a nationally televised game. But here in the lovely nuclear wasteland we call "Buckeye Nation," the game got pre-empted on ABC, who showed the ever-competitive Ohio State - Northwestern game.

Now when this happens, ESPN is supposed to pick up the national game, ie the Michigan game. When I saw on Thursday that that was the situation, I figured I had a 50-50 chance of actually seeing the game. I was being optimistic, as it turns out.

Sure enough, come kickoff, both ESPN and ABC are showing the OSU game. Which, by the way, ends up a 58-7 blowout which I can see on two, count 'em two, channels.

Bless my lovely wife, who, upon seeing my anguish, actually called the cable company to chew them out. No dummy she, she complained that we were unable to watch the Penn State game -- had she complained about missing the Michigan game here in Ohio, no doubt the nose-picking third-grade dropout OSU fan on the other end of the line would have gleefully cackled through his missing teeth at her....

Anyway, so I have to listen to Michigan on internet radio. Not good for my blood pressure. So for three-and-a-half quarters, I'm pinned to my laptop, staring at but not actually cognizant of the Michigan State - Notre Dame game on the TV (although I will point out that Notre Dame is now 0-4, heh!).

As it turns out, the cable company was showing the Michigan game, but in the non-high-def channels (non-high-def? do people watch that anymore?). I only figured that out with four minutes left in the game. I flip over in time watch Michigan move the ball downfield and then punt with 1:30 left. So Penn State now has the ball back, and is only down by 4. Dancing through my head are visions of Penn State returning the last-second game-winning touchdown misery that Mich bestowed upon them in 2005. And now I can't watch any more.

I can't.

I just can't.

So I went to the backyard and sat here:



Yes, I am sitting on a plastic picnic bench, nursing my Nosferatu, and trying to keep from throwing up.

(Have I mentioned my love-hate relationship with football?)

Anyway, the most amusing part is that while I am sitting on a playschool picnic bench and drinking beer, I hear -- simultaneously -- both my wife and my neighbor yelling out to me from the two houses "it's okay, Chris/Honey, it's over."

And with that, Michigan's ninth straight win over Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions is in the books. I can now exhale.


(Sorry, Joe...)

The Black Crowes

So I've been listening to the Black Crowes all morning. Amazing stuff that never gets old -- they can really lay down a jam, and their live stuff is particularly good.

Style: hard rock with a heavy blues influence. Cross the Rolling Stones with Led Zeppelin, and you'd be close to the Crowes.

You could peel the paint off your walls with some of these tracks. Highly recommended!

Our Long National Nightmare is Over...

...at least for this week.



38-0 Michigan over Notre Dame. Thank you, Notre Dame, for being worse than us.

Programming Note

So for those of you in the Cleveland area, Monday morning from 9-10 I will be on WCPN (90.3) along with my colleagues and friends Dan and Stacy talking about "Dark Matter" -- and no, that doesn't refer to Michigan's chances in the Big 10 this year. Er, maybe it does. Anyway, tune in!

If they post a podcast, I'll link to it so you can listen to it afterwards. Update: Here's the podcast link. Click "Listen".


And that night from 6-8pm, come on down to the Great Lakes Brewery to chat about Dark Matter with Dan and I at the Science Cafe...

Peaks and Valleys

And so college football has kicked off.

Yesterday we took the girls to their very first football game ever, Case at Oberlin. (Yes, both schools have a football team; they're in DIII.) Free admission, 50-yard lines seats, all that fun stuff.



The girls managed to sit through a half before being bored silly, so that's probably all one can ask for their first game. The indoctrination process will be slow but steady.


(Case won, by the way...)

Now, I hope they will grow up to be more like their mother than like me when it comes to football. She loves football, enjoys the games, rides the highs and the lows, but then seems to have this ability to (figuratively) walk away from the stress of it all.

I, on the other hand, will probably die of ulcers from watching the game. I love it, but I am edgy and stressed watching games, and it kills me a little bit each time when Michigan inevitably implodes a few times each season.

Which makes yesterday a classic example of my love/hate relationship with the game. While it was tons of fun taking the girls to a game and explaining what a punt is, a few hours north of us this was happening:



(Thanks to the boys at MZone for this perfect visual description of the Michigan game...)

sigh.

I love football.

I hate football.

I'm going to go throw up now.