Posts Tagged "basketball"

Weekend Score Summary | March Madness & Frozen Four

Dear Kid,

Score so far. Weekend roundup of scores. DearKidLoveMom.comAs you may have heard, we’re in the midst of March Madness. This means that instead of walking a plastic bottle over to the recycling bin, Dad now shoots, misses, and yells, “goal tending.” (Score so far: Dad: 0; recycle bin: 5.)

It also means the TV is tuned to basketball a lot. Possibly even more than a lot. And when it’s not basketball, it’s hockey (Frozen Four preliminary games), because apparently there are real life penalties for going sports-free during this season. (Score so far: Dad: much cheering; Booker: napping interrupted with each score).

The TV remote is getting an incredible workout. I’m sure it works for Dad (I think it’s a man-thing), but the constant channel flipping is scrambling my brain a little. It’s like we’ve invented the new game of baske-hockey. The announcers really don’t sound all that different, but the squeaky sneakers are definitely different than hockey skates. (Score so far: shorts: same length for hockey and basketball; broadcasters: closer to a heart attack than seems necessary; bad commentating: he’s not only in the flow, he’s playing swimmingly—could be for basketball or hockey.)

Dad is (unsurprisingly) commenting on the games, the refereeing, and the sportscasting. The only thing I haven’t heard him talk about is fashion statement of the uniforms. (Score so far: Uniforms: un-evaluated; players: not playing up to in-house standards: officials: need you even ask?)

In other sporting news, I’ve been creating chaos in the kitchen, but so far I haven’t burned anything. (Score so far: successes: 1; disasters: 1.)

Spring break has started here. This is good news for Pi who is still healing. Unfortunately, the freezer seems to be warming up along with the weather. (Score so far: crocuses: happily blooming; appliances: negative 5 b’zillion; Booker: doesn’t like walking in the rain.)

No big plans for the week, although I am hoping to have more successes than overt failures in the kitchen. (Score: TBD.)

Love, Mom

 

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Duh, Get With It Mom! | Donkey Basketball

Dear Kid,

Well, not too surprisingly, it turns out that I know even less about basketball than I thought I did. Also not surprisingly, Grandma has Provided Information.

Polar Bear eating basketball DearKidLoveMom.comThere is such a thing as donkey basketball. It is generally played as a halftime entertainment-slash-fundraiser at a school game. Participants (sometimes students, sometimes teachers, sometimes firefighters, etc.) ride (or attempt to ride) the donkeys and play basketball.  Our district (being as how we are in the greater Cincinnati area and Way Behind the Times) has not (to the best of my knowledge) partaken in this particular event.

Of course, donkey basketball has been around since the 1930s and Cincinnati isn’t really an entire century behind.

“When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.” Mark Twain

I’m guessing that our athletic director never heard that donkey hooves are great basketball court floor conditioners.

Love, Mom

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March Madness | Stuff You Don’t Know and Cinderella Stories

Dear Kid,

March Madness DearKidLoveMom.comWell, it’s March Madness.

SUNY Albany lost to Florida to the accompaniment of much yelling at the TV.This surprised pretty much no one as Albany was ranked dead last and Florida was ranked considerably higher (#1 is considerably higher than #last).

Almost all the Ohio teams lost as well. This surprised many people and broke many brackets. (It is considered unlucky to have your bracket broken as it means you will not win $1 billion. But don’t feel bad–the odds of creating a perfect bracket are one in nine quintillion* which are pretty big odds. Then throw in that these are college players and you’re better off betting on finding two identical snowflakes.)

Meanwhile, people who did not bet on March Madness will make all sorts of overdone bracket jokes on Facebook { }.

March Madness continues until April 5. Which means our television will take a lot more abuse over the next few weeks. (I wonder if I need to report TV abuse…)

The first NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was in 1939 and had only eight teams. Now there are some number just short of a quintillion.

Donkeys on the Court-- March Madness-- DearKidLoveMom.comSportswriters are having fun writing about a potential Cinderella Story, wherein a low ranked team might win. It is lovely that they are (correctly) assuming that predicting the winner is a fairy tale, but ever so wrong in the particulars. Basketball players almost always keep both shoes on their feet, the shoes have no heel to speak of, and while the shorts they wear these days are voluminous they will never be confused with a ballgown. Sportswriters clearly are not focused on fashion.

That pretty much exhausts my knowledge about basketball in general and March Madness in particular. Maybe I can find a guest blogger to write something useful as we get farther into the tournament. Or not.

Tanner is graduating today. Be sure to send Auntie M a congratulatory text.

Love, Mom

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Wearable Technology | Might Need a Pass on This One

Dear Kid,

When little kids play futbol (or football or any sport for that matter) they pretend to be big stars of the game. They hit the winning home run, they save the impossible-to-save goal, they kick the winning PAT with 1 second left in the game.

They don’t practice being squashed at the bottom of a pile of larger than life humans who bench press large buildings as a warmup. Rarely do they argue about who gets to be the player who misses the last second basketball shot. Almost never do they want to be the one to run all the way down the field just to turn around and run back.

If you were to wave a magic wand for a group of adult-type spectators, they would all want to be in the same playing situation they practiced when they were little. They would want to be the one hitting the last second three point shot, leaping to save the incredible goal, diving to catch the game winning touch down, perfectly placing the ball in the top left of the goal.

Soccer Futbol. Do you really need to feel the tackle to enjoy the game? Wearable Technology. DearKidLoveMom.comApparently, there is a company Down Under who has missed the concept entirely. According to Mashable, the telecommunications company Foxtel “claims to have created a shirt that uses wearable technology to let you experience some of the physical sensations that athletes on the field are having. Those include pressure (to mimic a thumping heart), impact, despair (“the sinking feeling of every costly mistake”), exhaustion and adrenalin.”

I do not need a shirt to experience exhaustion–I do that daily. Despair and adrenalin? Every time I burn dinner. Pressure? I’ve got enough stress as it is, thank you.

So I’m not sure I see the point of the shirt. But I’m sure there are fans who will ante up and enjoy every punch and fall.

Note to the developers: IMHO, it will not be necessary to add smell-o-vision to the shirt. We know the smell of stinky man-sweat and it will not go nicely with our beverages and snacks.

What will they think of next?

Love, Mom

 

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YouTube Did WHAT?? Jean Claude Van Damme and Columbia Lions Count

Dear Kid,

YouTube was down for a while yesterday. Didn’t know about it? Good, that means you were doing something important like going to class or sleeping.

There were some people (12. I counted) that were extremely upset about the YouTube outage. I say that those people should get over it. We didn’t even have YouTube when I was young. We had to procrastinate the good, old-fashioned way—by watching TV. Not by watching 20 second videos of cats. (Although some of those videos are darn adorable.)

One of the problems with YouTube being down was that people couldn’t see Jean Claude Van Damme’s commercial for Volvo Trucks. It’s pretty awesome. (It was shot in one take. Do not try this at home. Do not try this away from home. Just don’t try this. Ever.)

Apparently it’s not quite as dangerous as it looks (yes, they really drove backward) because Jean Claude was connected to safety lines that don’t show in the video. You still shouldn’t try it.

A little over a year ago, Volvo produced a stunt called the Ballerina in which a woman walked across a high line between two trucks as they were driven along a highway. Forward that time. Look up ‘Volvo Ballerina’ on YouTube if you want to see it. If YouTube is behaving.

Another video that people couldn’t watch while YouTube was down was of the Columbia University (Go Lions!) basketball game against Michigan State (Go Spartans [just to be fair]).

It seems the crowd was able to outsmart the players. With barely 3 ½ minutes left in the game, Columbia (Go Lions!) had the ball. Somehow, the Michigan State crowd coordinated itself to count down the shot clock. A fictitious shot clock. A shot clock that was mysteriously off by a second or two. So that when the Columbia players (Go Lions!) thought they still had 2 seconds left, oops! Shot clock turnover. I thought players weren’t supposed to listen to the crowd. Especially when you don’t have home court advantage. Those boys were just too trusting.

(For the record, I never went to a basketball game when I was at Columbia. We grad school types didn’t do that. We grad school types weren’t always all that bright. So I’m trying to make up for it a little now. As long as I can do it from the comfort of my own home and not at an actual game.)

Love, Mom

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