4NYB0DY'S 1NT3RN4L...

anybody's internal

emotions are a tangled

mess of trauma, fear, and hope

fight-or-flight anxieties

mass triggered for amusement;

we need to feel survival

S14: NCAA Tournament Top Returning Scorers - Elite 8 Sunday

I am bored with doing these, and honestly am completely geeked/amped/hyped for the VCU game this afternoon, as hyped as I've been for any Redskins football game in 15 years. I am fucking hyped. So this will be a rush job, just so if someone comes back and is like, "Why did you do all of them except that Sunday? Why did you quit?" I will have stifled that. Not like that happens. Shit, not even sure if anybody reads this. I should really start just doing this shit in notebooks myself again because when you throw it into the maelstrom that is the interwebz, you attach the hopes someone sees it. But no one does. So then there is failure in your heart. My heart is clogged enough from years of fried chicken from assorted country stores. But here be the top 14 bitches playing ball today, as ranked by scoring points throughout their collegiate career in the NCAA tournamentel format...
#1: MARCUS MORRIS (Kansas Junior forward; 100 total previous NCAA tournament points, 46 this year) - One of them Morris boys that will have to be shut the fuck down today by my VCU Rams. That's a tall order - no pun intended. With Kansas being the only #1 seed remaining, I don't know... I hate to put negative psychic energy out there, but they seem almost unstoppable.
#2: TYLER ZELLER (UNC Junior forward; 93 previous tourney points, 82 this year) - Seven-foot white dude with pug face has blossomed into a workable slightly lesser Tyler Hansbrough. Still has another year left on his contract too, so should be a pugilist of Plumlees next year. (I am sad no one reads this, because "pugilist of Plumlees" is probably one of the better little twists of phrase anyone has written during this basketball tournament. I should start hyping myself to the world more; but then I wouldn't have time to actually do my nonsense.)
#3: BRADFORD BURGESS (VCU Junior guard; 80 previous tourney points, 70 this year) - Big Shot Brad came through at the end of the game Friday night, and had me stomping my feet and cackling like a rabid unicorn, waking up children, scaring animals, generally creating chaos in the middle of east coast sleepy time with my sports-related emotional overdoses. Big Shot Brad is gonna have to be the fuck on-point today, all day. Also man, Shaka Smart is probably coaching candidate of the year at every major school looking right now, and they are all anxiously awaiting talking at holmes as soon as this magical run is over. But man, what a run by VCU this has been, and Burgess still has another year to come back. I am not sure how my beloved VCU does it, but somehow they've gotten a run of good short-time head coaches who keep the cupboard stocked for mid-major successes.
#4: HARRISON BARNES (UNC Freshman forward; 66 previous tourney points, all of it this year) - While at this point I am pulling for UNC, during the regular season I usually am against them unless it is against Duke. So the fact Harrison Barnes has developed into a tremendous presence bothers me. He did not really immediately enough to be an NBA one-and-doner I do not think, so he will be back, to absolutely torment everybody else in the ACC next year. So while I am stoked for him doing well right now (I could never root for John Calipari team... I don't think), I am frustrated this motherfucker is playing at UNC.
#5: DARIUS MILLER (Kentucky Junior guard; 63 previous tourney points, 27 this year) - Like I just said, I could never root for a John Calipari team. He is just much too much of an obvious sketchy dick. I mean, this time of year those personal prejudices and allegiances get stretched and tested. I was pulling for them when they played Ohio State, but I had to pretend Calipari wasn't over there. I thought the same might happen against UNC, but I don't know... they are basically the same thing, just one in a darker shade of blue - two storied and powerful programs that get all the top kids simply by being who they are. Roy Williams is far more palatable than Calipari... I don't know. I have a feeling this is a game that I won't have a horse in until it kind of falls into place while the game is on. I would guess if VCU loses that I'll pull for UNC to have an ACC team represent in the Final Four. But if VCU wins, I will probably root for Kentucky to have lower seeds in the Final Four, although a UNC/UConn game probably bodes better for eliminating UConn (Big East hatred), and a UNC/VCU championship game would be great, and probably make my buddy Loftin's head fly off his shoulders in glee.
#6: MARKIEF MORRIS (Kansas Junior forward; 62 previous tourney points, 44 this year) - He is the other big twin. They were in a gang with O-Dogg and were involved in an armed robbery before their freshman year at Kansas, but O-Dogg pistol-whipped the store clerk and retrieved the tape of the robbery, so the Morris boys had their scholarships intact. Marcus is a better baller, but Markief is gullier. In fact, the reason he doesn't score as much is because he's high most games.
#7: BRANDON ROZZELL (VCU Senior guard; 61 previous tourney points, 58 this year) - Along with Boo Boo Rodriguez, the senior leadership on this VCU team that has already won 4 games in the tourney, which is 33% more than anybody else in the Elite 8. Math is fundamental.
#8: BRADY MORNINGSTAR (Kansas Senior guard; 59 previous tourney points, 36 this year) - Kansas. White guy. Named Brady. Heir to the veggie burger empire. White. As. Fuck.
#9: TYREL REED (Kansas Senior guard; 55 previous tourney points, 20 this year) - See above, just without the soy-based inheritance.
#10: TYSHAWN TAYLOR (Kansas Junior guard; 54 previous tourney points, 27 this year) - How many motherfuckers are on this team? Well, I know probably like 12 to 14. But damn, how am I supposed to care about this many guys? My biggest problem with Kansas is actually kind of stupid - it's the font they use on their uniforms for names and numbers. It's slightly wild westernly, but with a touch of ragtime happiness. I find it annoying, and thus hate Kansas, especially since they are always so good. Except head coach Bill Self is infamous for having his teams experience post-season meltdowns at inopportune moments. That day will hopefully be today for the calendar year 2011.
#11: JOHN HENSON (UNC Sophomore forward; 52 previous tourney points, all of it this year) - Not the dude with the Rasheed Wallace mark on his hair that used to host Talk Soup, which I guess is now just The Soup. Some other dude named John Henson, although I'm not even sure if that old Talk Soup dude's name is actually John Henson. I was just operating off memory, and honestly I've been bored and gobbling oxycodone's like Altoids the past couple nights, just to give myself something to wobble through.
#12: JAMIE SKEEN (VCU Senior forward; 52 previous tourney points, all of it this year) - Skeen is the one guy on VCU who can take over a game to some extent. He started his college days at Wake Forest, but transferred after a year, and man, I can't even begin to suggest how excited I am for this game. A problem I have is the student body at VCU freaked out after the win on Friday night and were taking over the streets of Richmond after the game. Ideally you want to save that type of energy for the final big win, and to do so then suggests that at that point, psychically, VCU was content. That's not good. Them motherfuckers should be hungry to do it all. The chip on their shoulder should not be satisfied until there's one team left on the bracket. When George Mason made their run, it was the same thing. Once they knocked off UConn and made the Final Four, you could sense they were good at that point. No need to push further. That's what made Butler's run last year so great, was they had that hunger the whole way through, and were only one missed basket away from winning the title, which would be amazing for a mid-major school in today's college basketball environment. The thing is, if VCU can knock off Kansas this afternoon, it sets up a Final Four game against Butler, which would essentially be a battle between two mid-majors. Thus, VCU would regard them as their equal, not a power conference heavyweight stacked with talent that would never even consider VCU. This, psychologically, makes VCU feel they have an even shot in that first Final Four game. And whatever team gets to the championship, at that point you're in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a mid-major (although Butler is attempting to disprove those odds), so you might as well go all the fuck out at that point. Well, now that I've plotted it all out, I've probably jinxed them. RAM NATION!
#13: JOEY RODRIGUEZ (VCU Senior forward; 50 previous tourney points, 42 this year) - Rodriguez is a small dude on the floor, but has shown himself to be solid with the ball as a point guard, and a terribly annoying defensive gnat. This run through the tournament has probably made Boo Boo, as he is affectionately known, a hot commodity in the overseas leagues. Rodriguez probably added five years to his basketball dream of playing professionally in the past two weeks. God bless him.
#14: JOSH HARRELLSON (Kentucky Senior forward; 49 previous tourney points, 47 this year) - See, I am thankful this dude finally made the list after his big game on Friday night, because he is the reason I would root for Kentucky. They showed his dad during one game in the first week of the tourney, and his dad was in like a t-shirt, camouflage baseball hat, normal redneck dude facial hair, looked like he'd be in front of me at Kidds Country Store getting himself a bologna burger. And Harrellson himself has that grubby redneck kid look as well. That means he's got to be a huge fan favorite for the Kentucky fanbase, because let's face it, Kentucky is full of ignorant, racist people who live and die for UK basketball. You drive through the business route of any small town in the Bluegrass State and you're gonna see some roly-poly future diabetes cases blue collaring their way through the day in some Wildcats gear. I do not condescend towards this at all, because such things are beautiful things, and perfect for the American World we have built. But with Calipari - who is somewhat of an obvious yankee (and I know Kentucky is not technically a southern state, but they along with West Virginia are for all intents and purposes part of the south at this point, culturally at least) - and a slew of questionably behaving black dudes, Harrellson, with his Solomon Grundy-like bumbling looks and brutarian basketball stylings, he's like one of "us" to most of those people. God bless him, too. In fact, god bless us all. I mean fuck it, the world is coated in Japanese radiation, half of the Middle East is overthrowing itself while our beloved leaders decide that out of 12 countries oppressing people and having revolts on their hands, only Gaddhafi is worth bothering with, so let's bomb the fuck out of him, relentlessly, just because. And here we are sitting around watching basketball obsessively. God best bless us, because if he don't, we're fucked.

MNZ: Washingtonian September 2010

A bonus pick-up from the free magazine library bin, this is the Washington area's introductory piece on Donovan McNabb, him smiling happily on the cover, holding a football, asking "Can this man save the Redskins?" Well, that didn't turn out so well. Funny thing about finding this was I got it around the same time Dan Snyder was suing the Washington City Paper (one of those weekly alternative rags) for a piece from last November detailing a long list of infractions Snyder has committed on humanity. Basically, the gist of the story is Dan Snyder is a scummy fucker, albeit a billionaire who can do whatever he wants, and owns the Redskins, and most likely will run them completely into the ground. None of this seems unlikely to me, and what shocked me about the Washington City Paper piece was, before I read it, I didn't think I could hate Dan Snyder more. Somehow by the end, I did. Of course, no one (including me) didn't really know about the article until Dan Snyder made a big point during the Super Bowl week of suing them over the article, claiming some really nonsensical things (like anti-semitism) and basically threatening to just tie them up financially with lawsuits to bankrupt them... not exactly endearing threats from a guy struggling to maintain a positive image as owner of one of the most valuable sports franchises on earth.
But the Washingtonian article really gets at more of what Snyder is about - media manipulation. The article on McNabb is really nothing more than a fluff piece, positioning McNabb as the first real QB the Redskins have ever had in maybe decades, and how things were going to finally be better. This is a common theme I've seen as a Redskins fan. Last year it was Donovan McNabb and Mike Shanahan. The year before that it was Albert Haynesworth. The year before that it was a changing of the guard with Jim Zorn and Vinny Cerratto being officially called what he already had been - the player personnel guy. Every year there is some shifting of the same raggedy coconut shells around in fast handed orders to make it appear like, "Yeah, we're gonna win." And the local media backs this up.
I mean, sometimes it's obvious, as Snyder owns most of the sports talk in the D.C. area. But it really seems to me he has plants inside the local papers as well. The Post pretends to be against Snyder, but they really haven't lit his ass up like you would expect, outside of the occasional columnist. Snyder creates these new auras, over and over, and pretends things are better, and people keep on spending money. It's very disheartening to me, because the only sports team I am emotionally attached to beyond logic is the Redskins. So even with no actual input on what happens, my Sundays in the fall can be ruined and depressed, and usually are, eventually. But he manipulates things back into something every spring or summer.
This year will be no different. The Skins have the 10th pick in the NFL draft, and though they need a lot of stuff, including QB, they will ignore all their basic needs or a flashy young QB prospect in a year of over-valued QB prospects, who will then be thrown into the mix too early because Donovan McNabb will be run off and Rex Grossman is Rex Grossman (meaning inherently shitty), so the rookie - even if he could be good - will be quickly turned to damaged goods by too many sacks and blitz-happy NFC East defenses having field days with him. While it would make sense to draft a NT or another OL to go with last year's pick of Trent Williams, and try to actually build a football team, they'll get a QB. The media hype will pick up around the draft in April as well, about how this QB or that QB is the next big thing, a definite Matt Ryan or Joe Flacco type with the potential to be Joe Theismann, or even an in-the-raw Joe Montana. We'll get another smiling September magazine cover face who will be the new face of the Redskins, and things will be promised all over again, how it's finally gonna be different, and a new era has finally dawned.
And then by next February, that smiling face will be tossed onto the scrap heap of our memories as well, it'll be the same ol' shit, and Dan Snyder will still be making a ton of money off of merchandising, licensing, parking fees, everything. Fuck you Dan Snyder. Fuck you.