A Friday Night Clearinghouse

The Thursday night crowd.

This post was originally entitled “The Night Indiana Basketball Jumped Shark,” but I really have no desire to slave over 500 workmanlike words on a subject as irrelevant to society as Hoosier basketball. However, I also have little desire for a potential employer to come face-to-face with the phrase “Another Flaccid Johnson” – however exceedingly clever it may be –  in the rare chance that he or she stumbles across this website before Monday.

So I’ll leave the Indiana shpiel at this: any multiple-time NCAA champion that allows its fans to storm the court upon defeating an overrated, 24th-ranked Big Ten opponent should be immediately ordered to vacate a title under the threat of Death Penalty.

If you’re nodding your head vigorously, please visit fellow Hyperbole Connoisseur Kyle Rancourt at the incendiary weblog KyleRancourt.com. Tell him Hilson sent ya.

Now I’ll write about whatever crosses my mind in the 37 minutes left before I’m kicked out of Starbucks. Clearly, Fridays are lonely nights for graduate students in the 352, especially when the preceding Thursday nights play out like… well, a night on the town with a group of girls who either A) have boyfriends B) want girlfriends C) just want to be friends or D) collectively represent groups A, B and C.

Usually I’d revert to bullet points here, but this girl sitting across from me is a total smokeshow, and I really don’t want to look like a lazy ass in front of her. Fully fledged paragraphs to follow.

girl sitting across from me/gratuitous smokeshow

Let’s talk about Herschel Walker, a man both directly responsible for my father’s underwhelming academic tenure at UGA and the third best thing to ever come out of Athens, Georgia (sundresses, R.E.M.). Herschel’s claims to fame are many: he won the ’82 Heisman, altered the trajectory of William Bates’ existence, invented college football, etc. But what he’s doing in mixed martial arts at the age of 48 – namely, disfiguring people – may very well be the man’s crowning ach… Okay, nevermind. But it’s pretty damn impressive. And what’s more impressive is that few sports talkers gave the proper reaction when Hersch announced he’s thinking NFL comeback (that reaction being “dismissive laughter”). Would I put a future in pro football past Thirty Four? Of course. But that we’re even discussing it testifies to the guy’s athletic legend.

I watched roughly 13 minutes of Bulls-Magic tonight before the depressing pangs of spending my Friday night watching Bulls-Magic became unbearable. In these 13 minutes, I watched Dwight Howard eviscerate an overmatched, undersized Carlos Boozer – a feat suggesting offensive prowess that’d been, up until now, completely lost on me. Excuse my ignorance, but I really had no idea Dwight stocked a 15-foot bank shot in his surprisingly expansive arsenal, or for that matter, the consistent work ethic to punish defensive post players without the ball. This probably goes without saying, but I overuse the phrase “this probably goes without saying.” Also, as a fan of Stan Van Gundy not being disposed to a working microphone come May, the Magic really scare me.

I cede these remaining three minutes to the admission that I just 24 hours ago compared a girl at favorite G-Ville watering hole The Top to a ’68 Topps Nolan Ryan/Jerry Koosman RC (one of which is in my closet). Though in a relatively fuzzy state of mind at the time, I quite clearly made a revelatory analogy and one, too, that I’m comfortable standing behind even without the benefit of multiple Dogfish Heads in your – the reader’s – system. Here’s my thinking: this girl – who I see every week, btw – is incomparably beautiful (brunette, huge Persian-looking eyes, dark skin, probably from some country I’ve never heard of… basically a classier, more alternative, smarter, smaller version of Kim Kardashian).

Now I swear on Travis Henry’s kids’ lives this girl smiled at me multiple times over the course of the night, and not in a “hey, you should probably stop staring at me, it’s rude” kind of way, but in a “hey, you should probably buy me a PBR” kind of way. And you know what I did to requite this display of affection? Nothing. Obviously. Because if I had done something, you wouldn’t be reading this at all. Point is, there’s no value in owning a ’68 Topps Nolan Ryan/Jerry Koosman RC. You’re not gonna sell it. You’re not gonna bring it to trade shows. It’s just gonna sit in your dank closet and taunt you from afar. It might as well not exist.

And on that note, I bid you sweet dreaming. Cross your fingers I land a job in Miami. If I’m constantly surrounded by beautiful women, better chances I’ll eventually grow a pair.

- Robbie