In defense of the CTA

As my Chicago readers, and possibly select others, will be aware, the Brown Line is currently undergoing a series of renovations wherein stops are closed for a while - this "while" has usually turned out to be a year, which I'll admit at least sounds like a lot - to increase capacity, as prior to the start of renovations the Brown Line was incapable of handling trains as long as those on other lines, even though it presently services some of the fastest-growing and most popular neighborhoods, and thus seems to be turning into one of the busiest routes (especially in relation to the overall distance it covers, especially in its NW-of-Belmont non-overlapping-coverage section).

This has left people along the route, including certain friends of this blog, feeling kind of put out. And I'm not going to say that that's entirely undeserved, but I think in general the CTA gets a bad rap. Open a Red Eye sometime - it seems like at least once a week there's a piece the general gist of which is, "Hey, the CTA sucks, right? We interviewed five twentysomethings who didn't grow up here for the answer!" And the MOTS interviews commence, with Rebecca, 28, Lakeview (but probably having grown up in Kansas) citing the one time she ever had a problem with a bus as proof that CTA buses are like Dante's Inferno on wheels.

The CTA isn't perfect - it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise - but is it really worse than mass transit systems in other cities? (New York's trains have more coverage but their buses are harder to figure out; Washington's trains are nicer but are only comparable in coverage and none of their lines run all night [a good way to gerrymander the cleanliness, I'm guessing]; LA's system is kind of horrible in my limited experience, but then LA is horrible in general from a transit perspective.) More importantly, does anyone have any real solutions?

I actually once complained in this space about the CTA after I had a particularly bad morning, but in retrospect, that's by far the worst morning I've had - I mean, by far - in a year and a half of commuting five days a week. The commute most days is exactly the same - I leave the apartment, get to the bus stop 7-8 minutes later, and I'm on a bus within 10 minutes depending on how well I've timed my arrival. Even on bad traffic days I'm at work within 25-30 minutes of boarding the bus, and it's usually more like 20. This really isn't bad at all, and it's the case for 99% of my year.

To be fair, this is only one person's experience, but a lot of people seem to feel about a late bus the same way they might feel about, say, their food being late in a restaurant, and I think we all know the kind of shit-fits you'll see in those situations. There are people responsible for your service, not automatons. If 9 times out of 10 there's no real problem, why kick them in the butt on the tenth? Yes, people can be made late for work by transit problems and being late for work is traditionally frowned upon, but the CTA isn't making you late on purpose. No, not even when they do track maintenance. You know what makes you late? Tracks falling apart underneath the train. No one ever made any friends by slowing people down with preventative maintenance, but God forbid they didn't do this stuff and something fell apart? Do you suppose a lot of the same people would be first in line to condemn the CTA for its inaction (and, of course, for the fact that a busted track is now making them late to work)?

Here's the thing: the Brown Line serves Roscoe Village and Lincoln Square, two of the most newly-happening neighborhoods in the entire city. And it wasn't built with that in mind. What's wrong with a desire to increase capacity? Sure, it's a headache now, but this isn't the kind of work that can be done by elves while the shoemaker is in bed. The whole idea is that it's a year of hassle now for years of no hassle (or less, anyway) later.

The CTA's slogan is apparently "Leave early, leave late, alternate," those being the three possible ways to avoid big human gridlock at peak hours. Leah's opinion is that "Nobody in Chicago thinks this is going to work." I agree, but her reason seems to be that it won't work because the CTA always sucks, whereas I think it won't work mostly because 99% of people aren't actually going to do that. They're peak hours for a reason; people are going to pin their hopes to "Maybe other people will try those things" and do exactly what they do every day, and things will get worse and worse. To be fair, "Leave early" isn't the best solution if you like sleep, and "Leave late" isn't the best solution if you like work, but frankly I see no reason why "alternate" couldn't work. Consider Leah's situation as stated in her blog - she lives three blocks from Damen and less than that from Montrose, which puts her pretty close to Montrose Avenue itself. Well, checking the CTA map, we see that the 78 (Montrose) bus goes eastbound to the Wilson Red Line stop. Assuming that the average of every ten minutes in the 78's schedule holds even close to true, this gives us:

1. Less wait time in the morning (highly unlikely you'd be waiting 23 minutes for a bus)
2. Slightly longer transit time to the Red Line (probably 10 minutes instead of 7, oh nooo), but:
3. No waiting at Belmont, plus the Red Line will probably be a little less crowded when it gets to Wilson than it would have been at Belmont.

All told, I honestly doubt this commute would be much worse even than a non-renovation-affected Brown Line commute of two years ago. This may very well be the "alternate" experiment route that Leah is planning. I'll be very curious to see how it works out. That said, be wary of generalizing off one day - the post linked above seems to imply that the CTA is garbage because this one time a train was late, which I find to be specious reasoning.

I've had few problems with the CTA, personally. I think it's easier to navigate in combination than pretty much any city's system you could name that covers a similar amount of ground. And I think that most people who complain don't consider the alternatives enough. Train issues? Try a bus. Don't like fares going up? How else are they going to pay for the more modern buses I think all us bus riders prefer? People want to kick the CTA whenever it's down but they also resent paying to help make it better. What world are we living in? The real one, or the one where taking the train is something I do when my unicorn is too tired to fly me to work?

I say, give the Brown Line capacity increase a chance. If they fix up the stations and lengthen the trains and things still suck ass, then by all means, complain away.

In like a foghorn

Chicago is not, I suppose, known for having the most consistent weather this time of year, but recently it's been kind of ridiculous. A few weeks ago I wore my new Cubs light jacket in the morning because it was in the 60s; by evening it was 32 and hailing. Sunday and Monday were gorgeous, the latter getting up to almost 80 - today it was in the low 70s until noon, when the temperature suddenly plummeted. By 4pm it was 40 degrees and the fog had rolled in. I'm sorry, I didn't realize I'd moved to San Francisco! Frigid walk home, then, on a day when I already was feeling like I had walking flu - now I ache all over and I'm running a low fever. Wonderful. Part of it is the bad sleep schedule I've been on - six hours on a weeknight if I'm lucky - so I think that will have to change for a while, at least until the shift in seasons stops jerking me around.

Probably this is my punishment for getting so excited for the impending start of mini golf season. The first courses open the beginning of April - that's this weekend, if you weren't aware - weather permitting. I probably won't be out there in the next couple of weeks - not least because the 10-day forecast shows no temperature above high 50s between now and next Thursday - but last year our "opening day" was April 10, so we may still meet that.

That's assuming I can convince anyone to go with me, of course, since whenever I start talking about mini golf I have that sense of people mentally edging away from me. Not that I necessarily blame them; I'm more than slightly aware that my mini golf jones is one that few casual players possess, and one that probably gets overwhelming at times. Alma seems mostly to quietly tolerate my behavior, and Drew likes mini golf enough to humor some of my wilder ventures - see, in particular, our evening trip to Mountain View Mine in Des Plaines last July and our Bolingbrook excursion a mere nine days later. Of course, he backed out of the Mini Golf Odyssey, but given how Alma and I felt at the end of it that's probably one of his wiser mini-golf-related decisions to date.

Anyway, I've been thinking about what exactly leads to, in particular, my desire to drive all over the Chicagoland area to courses 45 minutes to an hour away, in addition to just playing more nearby courses - Diversey, Novelty Golf, Par King - on a regular basis. (For example, between April 10 and September 4 last year - a span of 140 days or so - I played 26 rounds of mini golf on 19 different courses. That may not sound like a lot just saying it, but aside from normal, quotidian activities, how often do you do something 26 times in less than five months? That's almost once every five days, and even though it was bolstered hugely by a 16-round, 15-day period in July [including the one-day, eight-round odyssey], it still seems like an awful lot. And frankly, I probably would have played more were Alma not a calming influence in the relationship when it comes to my various obsessions.)

So why do I like and play mini golf so much, and why am I all too willing to make special trips for no other purpose? I've come up with a few reasons which probably get at the root of my problem:

1. Obsession with stats
I think I covered this in my initial defense of the mini golf page, but I do have something of an obsession with sports statistics. Mostly this comes from baseball, of course, but in general I always like to know, and keep, the score of any scored activity in which I indulge. You're lucky our Yahtzee records aren't online. This can't possibly be unique to me, of course - relatively early in the mini golf page's history, some guy I don't know e-mailed me to inform me that he had played most of the courses listed and recorded better scores than I had.

2. Obsession with fake sporting legend
This, again, was mentioned in the earlier post. I was never anything of an athlete, failing even to make a fourth grade soccer team after playing on a third grade team that was routinely pounded and allegedly won its only game of the year the day I wasn't there. (I say allegedly because the result, compared to our earlier game against the same team, has long struck me as dubious, and I feel like they may just have been pulling my chain.) I aligned myself with the high school soccer team as cameraman, worked at WNUR - I wanted to be around sports and somehow bask in their glory vicariously, even as I could never earn real glory myself. Of course, mini golf stats aren't real glory either - but they give me a "sport"-like activity at which I am actually somewhat competitive (possibly not on a bigger stage than "with my friends," but I plan to try and play the Par King tournament this year, so I guess we'll see), and even beyond that, I can shoot for my own records and feel a sense of purpose, to a minimal and kind of lame degree, each time out.

3. I like driving
I like being behind the wheel of a car, and trying out a lot of new and far-flung courses gives me an excuse.

4. I love geography
As you probably know, I have long been an enormous geography dork, reading the atlas before I could read anything else, internalizing the capital of every country and numerous other generally useless bits of knowledge, and in general having a strange affinity for maps and directions that even I am at a loss to explain. Driving around to different suburbs gives me this odd geographic sense of accomplishment, I think - and again, I'm not sure why that should be, except that I like traveling to new places and on my modest budget the Fox Valley is a little more accessible than New Zealand.

5. I'm something of a completist
I know this sounds odd, since I have a hard time finishing what I start in a lot of ways, but when it comes to seeking out things I enjoy, I don't want to stop once I start. Witness Drew and I compiling more than 20 new brands of root beer even after our initial 15-brand test (which reminds me, I really need to post the results for the second test at some point), and witness me playing 19 different courses last year and subsequently making a list of 14 more courses that I have not yet played and which are relatively accessible to Chicago, some number of which I will effort to hit this season.

So, I freely admit that I'm kind of on the obsessive end of the spectrum where miniature golf is concerned, but I'm not sure that's going to slow me down too much (barring an intervention from Alma and/or Drew, which may yet happen depending on how things shake out this summer). I mean, it's only mini golf, right? On the list of things a person can want to do all the time, this is probably among the least harmful; if it's between mini golf and a meth addiction or compulsive gambling or something, I think I'm doing okay with the mini golf. And yes, I did buy my own putter this year, but that's mostly for practice at home, as Alma bought me an automatic-return cup to putt into. (See, she's my enabler, sometimes!) And remember, people, if you're in town when the weather's nice and you have an interest in playing, I'm pretty much always game.

Watch it, Coney

Alma has a box of Joy waffle bowls that she got for ice cream (obviously). Now, yes, waffle bowls are fun to eat ice cream out of, but I think the people at Joy are a little full of themselves when it comes to their product. Don't believe me? Let's check the side of the box.

Before we get into the text (which I'm sure you can't read, which is why it's reprinted below), let me just say that I love the royal parchment letterhead on which it appears. "Hear ye! Hear ye! Ye Olde Joy Cone Company has issued the following proclamation about their waffle bowls and the methods in which thou might useth them!"

Joy® Presents
The Perfect Waffle Bowl

All right, Joy. First of all, nobody's perfect. Second of all, it's a freaking waffle bowl. But let's see where you're going with this.

Compare our waffle bowl to other waffle bowls –
* Compare the flavor – ours is the best!
* Compare the shape – ours is perfect!
* Compare the size – ours is twice as large so it holds twice as much!

Nice math on that last one. Wow, 2 = 2? You've shown me the light! I'm going to skip over the flavor one, because Joy's website actually implies that there are independent flavor-testing panels that rate Joy cones above all other cones, regardless of how silly that sounds to the casual observer. I do have to wonder about the second part, though. Is "perfect shape" really what anyone asks from a waffle bowl? As Alma noted, part of the charm of the waffle bowls you find at ice cream parlors is the crimped edge, implying that they were hand-crafted. Joy's "perfect shape" counterproductively implies a soullessness in the creation of the product that I can't imagine provides that much of an attraction. Frankly, I can't recall seeing too many waffle bowls on the shelves at all, so I'm guessing that Joy doesn't have as much competition in the retail department as it might like to think.

Give us a try. Our waffle bowl is a sweet treat, so it tastes best with foods that complement the sweetness.

Well, there goes my idea to fill it with chili. Must you dump all over my dreams, Joy?

You'll see some yummy ways to try our waffle bowls on the sides of this package.

I don't know anyone who has ever eaten anything but ice cream from a waffle bowl. Unsurprisingly, two of the other three sides of the package do in fact picture ice cream. The third pictures a cartoon child gesturing at a surprisingly robust fruit salad, which by my count contains at least six different kinds of fruit.

My question is, if you've gone to the trouble of getting yourself a healthy dessert, why do you want to crap up that endeavor by putting it into a waffle bowl? (Granted, the waffle bowl is hardly the worst thing ever, at just 80 calories, but it's certainly greater than the zero of using a real bowl. After all, if you're not going to eat the waffle bowl, there's no reason to use one at all.)

For other delicious combinations, try the following:

* Vanilla yogurt and granola cereal.

* Your favorite fruit slices and your favorite yogurt flavor.

Wait a second, Joy: I thought you were going to come up with the ideas! Now all of a sudden I'm called upon to do the legwork? Come on, it can't be that hard to think up a popular fruit and type of yogurt.

* Create sundaes limited only by your imagination.

Let's hope my imagination isn't as limited as this copywriter's.

* For parties (children and adults alike), put out a variety of ice cream, toppings, fruits, nuts, you get the idea, and let everyone make their own dessert.

The strangely jocular familiarity (to say nothing of the egregious grammatical error) implied in "you get the idea" weirds me out a little bit. Also, I'm fairly certain that you've already named everything that could possibly be associated with ice cream, so what is even left unspoken by "you get the idea?" This doesn't even touch on the idea that fruits and nuts are types of toppings. They go off on this list, end it with "you get the idea," ha-ha implying all the myriad things you could put on your ice cream, but they totally gerrymandered the list to make it look more impressive. I'm on to you, bastards.

* Pudding topped with whipped cream and shaved chocolate.

Finally, something novel. I probably would have put this earlier on the list, because I think devotees of waffle-cone-box recipe hints would probably have wandered away before this point, having been told several times in a row, "Eh, come up with it yourselves."

For additional recipe ideas, visit our web site at http://www.joycone.com

"Additional" recipe ideas? What on earth else can you even do with a waffle bowl? A quick check of the website confirms: not very much. I'm glad they actually went to the trouble of suggesting types of ice cream you could put into the bowl, rather than informing you curtly that any sundaes are required to be the products of your imagination, but negative a million points for ending every recipe with "EnJOY." Hey, also prepare to be BOWLed over by the taste! Ha ha! You see what I did there? It's like, part of the product name!

The "make-ahead" preparations are also rather hilarious. This isn't like a real recipe where you'll need to let the Andes mints marinate overnight. "Chop Andes mints, saving some for garnish. Clean/dry fresh mint. (Be sure to do this at least two hours in advance, because all that work is going to tire you out, and you'll need some time to recuperate before preparation of the sundae can commence in earnest.)"

I was going to conclude this post with a note about how the small print on the box describes the company as "independent" and "partly family-owned," and give them a break because maybe they do a lot of the box design and/or promotion themselves. But the same small print also refers to "the art of cone baking." Calm the fuck down, you guys.

You mean coitus?

So I assume many of you will at least have heard of this online clothing site, Bluefly.com. Their big thing is designer brands on the cheap, I guess (or cheaper, anyway), and recently they appear actually to be making ads for television broadcast. But honestly, I don't know how much play ads like this are going to get:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSCoYi_tGRc (for the record, I would avoid watching this or anything below at work)

I mean, really? I'm as much a fan of taking clothes off as the next red-blooded guy, but this was made for television broadcast? The insane part is that this is the 90-second version, and of course we rarely see commercials that long. So maybe this wasn't intended for TV broadcast so much. But the 30-second version, which cuts through all the fooforah, hardly dispenses with the all-but-nudity.

And then there's the 15-second version. At this level the plot is barely even comprehensible - the whole point behind "What did you think I was going to wear to work today?" is lost. In 15 seconds the ad is pretty much just "Bluefly.com - The perfect post-fucking attire for the modern woman." (Of course, that could easily be the slogan at the end of the 30 and 90 spots, too.) For that matter, it almost plays like an ad for an escort service.

This sort of ad is evidently nothing new for Bluefly; consider this 2005 spot which I can only presume was Internet-only. And then, after I commented to Alma, Drew and Karen that the only way the original ad could be more soft-core pornographic was with thrusting and actual nudity, I ran across this one, which gets pretty much halfway there. This was the "uncut" version and never was supposed to hit TV, but compare it to the 30-second version - was there really that much of a difference?

Sex sells and we all know it, but I can't be alone in feeling like these ads are getting precariously close to the line of what it makes sense to have on TV. Even more so, though, I just hate the tagline on that last one. "Turn every head in the place, even if you never make it to the place?" What? So I should spend a bunch of cash on clothes that I'm only going to wear long enough for my amorous spouse to take them right back off? Money well spent! This could easily have been an ad for Viagra, and frankly it makes a lot more sense that way.

I fully expect the next Bluefly commercial just to be a 30-second clip from a porno movie, and right as they hit the money shot, the announcer comes in: "Bluefly.com. Apparently we sell clothing."

A decade under the influence (of pleats)

Sometime last week, around the same time as I was signing up for a gym membership in the hope of finally getting into shape, I realized that there were other things about my life that could use some alteration. In particular, I've been doing the whole t-shirt/khakis combination for about ten solid years now; I've always worn little more than t-shirts and my jeans period only lasted between the middle of seventh grade - when I finally gave up sweatpants after Melvin Baker threatened me with a pantsing - and the middle of ninth grade, after which point I was a khaki man. In other words, I hadn't put on a pair of jeans in ten years.

Until now. When I thought about upgrading my wardrobe (at least a little bit), I offered Alma the chance to help, partly because she's always held certain opinions about my clothing choices (#1: Pleats = evil) and partly because I have minimal fashion sense myself. We went to the Gap and she assisted in picking out the following:

1) A pair of jeans
2) A light sweater
3) A black hooded sweatshirt
4) A gray t-shirt

Yes, #4 is a t-shirt, but it's one more designed to be worn with other stuff; it's just a solid color, as opposed to most of mine which have graphics on them. Anyway, it was a start. Of course, these four items cost $150. If you're wondering why I didn't buy anything but t-shirts before now, it's because wearable sweaters cost fifty bucks.

At any rate, today I wore the sweater (over a black t-shirt I already had) and jeans to work. The outfit was kind of a hit. First of all, everyone who was told about me suddenly owning a pair of jeans went crazy; my dad called Alma his hero for getting me into a pair. My boss noted the jeans ("You don't wear jeans, do you?") and said that the outfit was a good look; I ran into Karen on the bus, who later commented favorably to Drew.

Of course, tomorrow it's back to t-shirts, more or less; I don't have a ton of new clothes yet, partially because it's expensive, and partially because I don't want to shell out when there's the chance that I could lose a significant amount of weight in the next six months or so. I may give the jeans a continued shot, though. I'm probably going to have to pair them with a belt - they're "loose relaxed fit" so they kind of hang off my butt a lot, which isn't that big a deal but can be a little annoying. Also, khakis have bigger pockets. But jeans would definitely be warmer in the winter (though of course that's conveniently ending). I'll give them a fair shot, anyway.

Also, can we get a few opinions in here on pleated pants? Alma and Karen swear they're the work of the devil; Drew and I don't get the big deal. My mom must not either since she bought them for me consistently; perhaps she can shed some light on the benefits of pleated pants. For the record, the jeans do seem to make me look slightly thinner in that area, but it's pretty marginal at the moment.

Bracket busting

As always, a reminder that the Tournament Challenge is still looking for entrants. E-mail bigflax (at) gmail (dot) com, or comment. Also, the Tournament Challenge page is now up and will be linked at right for the duration of the tournament.

As every year, thoughts on the brackets.

The committee sent the right message in general - playing and winning big games early, and doing well in your conference, will get you in and get you a good seed. Seeing teams like Southern Illinois and Butler on top-five seed lines had to be gratifying to mid-major programs that have that kind of ambition. If you can get the games and win them, you will be rewarded, regardless of conference.

That said, this was NOT a good year for the mid-majors as a whole. First of all, only six mid-major schools got at-large bids, half as many as in 2004 - and this after last year's George Mason revelation (to say nothing of Bradley, Wichita State and Wisconsin-Milwaukee). The six - #4 SIU, #5 Butler, #7 Nevada, #8 BYU, #9 Xavier, and #12 Old Dominion. In other words, the committee generally did not feel that mid-major at-large bids should go to anyone but teams that won their regular-season conference titles and were pretty dominant all year, ODU being the only exception (and by the seed, obviously being one of the last three teams in).

Instead, it was a good year for power-conference leavings. Stanford? Arkansas? Illinois? Not that inspiring. Arkansas lost 13 games, for crying out loud! On the other hand, look at the teams on the outside looking in - aside from Drexel and Air Force, most of the omitted teams are also power conference teams (Syracuse, Kansas State, West Virginia, Florida State). This just wasn't that great a year for the mid-majors, it seems - either they couldn't get the games or they couldn't win enough of them. Given the lack of buzz for most mid-majors, then, we probably can't complain too much about who the committee did let in - Air Force walloped Stanford in Palo Alto, but slumped down the stretch, so could you really take them first?

One place where I thought the comittee screwed the mid-majors a little bit was in pairing them against each other. How will the mids have a chance to shine when half are gone by Round 2? For example, Butler draws Old Dominion, BYU faces Xavier, and Nevada plays Creighton. That's five of the six at-large mid-majors in three games! This is going to make it way too easy for Billy Packer to crow about how the mid-majors are clearly not pulling their weight. It's very hard for me to believe that this was anything other than a TV decision - why match up BYU/Villanova and Kentucky/Xavier and get two middlingly-rated games, when you can match up Villanova/Kentucky and get one big number, since BYU/Xavier will probably get just as good a rating as BYU/Villanova and Kentucky/Xavier each would have? I don't know if my math (or lack thereof) is solid here, but at the very least it's suspicious. Why wouldn't you want to match a power-conference team with a mid-major team and see what the latter can do? It's not that there aren't games like that, but they're mostly between teams with bigger seed line differences. At the 7-10 and 8-9 level, only two of eight games match mid-major opposition with a power-conference team - and not only are both of those the two most successful mid-majors of the last 20 years who everyone knows now, Gonzaga and UNLV, but UNLV is actually the higher seed in their game against Georgia Tech. Meanwhile, two further games on those lines match mid-majors exclusively. Color me unimpressed.

Other than that, though, not too many complaints. It was an interesting year for seedings, with a lot of less-traditional teams ending up in the 3-6 range, and I think it could well yield a high number of first round upsets. At the risk of giving anything away, here are my preliminary looks at the brackets:

EAST
Possible Final Four teams: #1 North Carolina, #2 Georgetown, #4 Texas.
Possible sleeper: #7 Boston College. Georgetown appears to be peaking, which isn't good news for BC (if they can even get past Bob Knight and Texas Tech in Round One), but if BC can shock the Hoyas, the bracket opens up - this is probably the weakest 3-6 pairing in the entire tournament with Washington State and Vanderbilt. BC is inconsistent but could go all the way to the Elite Eight if they can just string together a couple good games.
Possible first-round upset: Both #14 Oral Roberts (which gave Memphis a good game as a #16 last year) and #11 George Washington (against a Vandy team that doesn't play that well away from home) have realistic shots, and don't count out #12 Arkansas - after getting thumped by Oregon, USC is limping into the tournament.

SOUTH
Possible Final Four teams: #1 Ohio State, #2 Memphis, #3 Texas A&M, #6 Louisville.
Possible sleeper: #5 Tennessee. After last year's close call against Winthrop, I can see the Vols being a trendy pick to get upset, and that isn't unfair. But they can go as far as a hot-shooting Chris Lofton can take them, and one never knows if that's going to be one round or three.
Possible first-round upset: As a 16 seed last year, Albany gave #1 UConn everything it could handle before finally bowing out. This year the Great Danes are up to a #13 and facing a relatively green Virginia team without many big wins this year and some pretty bad losses, including by 24 to Utah in Puerto Rico.

MIDWEST
Possible Final Four teams: #1 Florida, #2 Wisconsin, #3 Oregon, #4 Maryland.
Possible sleeper: #8 Arizona. Lute Olson's team always has a ton of talent, but this year it didn't quite come together. The fact that they still won 20 games speaks to the level of play they're capable of, though. Florida should be Purdue's biggest fan in Round One to avoid having to run with the Wildcats in Round Two.
Possible first-round upset: Plenty to go around. Notre Dame looks ripe for Winthrop's picking in the 6-11 game, but the 4-13 and 5-12 games could both yield upsets as well. Maryland finished strong until the Miami loss, but Davidson finished even stronger (if against lesser competition) and has a dangerous scorer in Dell Curry's son Stephen. As for the 5-12, we always learn that mid-majors seem to play better when not the favorites. Butler could gag a game they're expected to win, and a tough matchup with ODU won't help the chances that it happens.

WEST
Possible Final Four teams: #1 Kansas, #2 UCLA. Pretty hard not to picture one of these two advancing to Atlanta.
Possible sleeper: It pains me to say it, but #6 Duke. Coach K isn't the most successful coach in tourney history for no reason. On the other hand, Duke doesn't have a good recent history out of anything other than the top line (not that they've been below it much) - remember 1997, when a #2 Duke team got bounced by Providence in Round 2.
Possible first-round upset: Low seeds from power conferences often seem to do well - remember Florida State in 1998, Oklahoma in 1999, and Missouri in 2002? Well, watch out for Illinois here - Virginia Tech is not a tourney-tested team, and some nice ACC wins helped mask a pretty unimpressive OOC schedule. Plus, the Hokies can be super-inconsistent. #13 Holy Cross over #4 SIU is another possibility - see my earlier point about mid-majors not doing so well as the favorites and throw in that Holy Cross came very close to upsets in 2001 and 2002 as 15 and 16 seeds (and against big-name programs in Kentucky and Kansas).

For those of you in the Challenge, I'll get the electronic Excel bracket out tomorrow, but feel free to send me your picks sooner than that if you're the type to bang them out. Just make sure they're in a comprehensible format.

It's only four days away

"It," of course, is Selection Sunday, possibly the best day of the year. And that, of course, means it's time to look at who's in the 2007 BigFlax.com NCAA Tournament Challenge:

Me
Tyler
Dad
Drew
NJ Dave
Ryan
Justin
Craig
Rudnik

That's nine, which as far as I'm concerned is halfway home. I know there have to be more people out there who are game, but since I really need all the money by tournament time this year, and not "weeks afterward, which inevitably turns into never," be aware of the shortness of time. Don't get me wrong, I prefer more people to fewer, but if I have to cover three people at the end of things, it doesn't really work out all that well for me. Anyway, send me an e-mail at bigflax (at) gmail (dot) com either to register or to ask for a mailing address (if you need one, but it hasn't changed since last year). You can also indicate interest with a comment below.

Tripping DC fantastic

Let me get this out of the way first, because the people whom it concerns probably won't read all the way down this entry: time is dwindling on the 2007 BigFlax.com NCAA Tournament Challenge. We are now just ten days from tipoff, and that means it's ten days until things lock up. I hope my ultimatum on that front isn't what has kept people from signing up. Confirmed participants (for now; * means paid):

Me*
Tyler*
Drew
Dad
NJ Dave
Ryan

Which means we're missing all sorts of previous entrants: 2006 champ Stan, 2005 champ Craig, 2003 champ Nemo; James D, James Q, Jan, Rudnik, Justin, NU Dave, Rich, Rob R, and many others (although besides the ones listed and a couple who aren't likely ever to read this, I don't think most of the others - most of them WNUR Sports people - are likely to be back anyway). Surely the interest can't be as low as six - I'd really like to get at least to ten, although 17 is the optimal minimum (since it means a guaranteed prize for first, second, and last places). So if you're one of those people, or even if you're not, and you want in, comment below or shoot an e-mail to bigflax (at) gmail (dot) com.

Now then.

Over the last few days Alma and I were in Washington, DC (and environs). Alma was there on business; I was along for the ride and to see the family. On Thursday I got to see Alma present her paper on the characteristics of help-seeking youth (both street youth and non-street youth) which she had spent the last six months or so alternately working on and fretting about. As everywhere else, it was well-received, and she displayed a lot of composure in front of a large group of people working in the field. Good job, baby!

Thursday night we had dinner at Raku in Bethesda with Marian and Sam. I had sushi for the first time in a while - though sushi can be very good, there was a period a couple months ago or so where I ate too much of it in too short a period of time and just got kind of sick of it. (It's not exactly a turkey and provolone sub with extra vinegar, which you could eat every day.) I opted for a crunchy unagi roll, the "What a Match" roll, and the special Tasmanian ocean trout nigiri (as usual, I enjoy ordering things with fun names). The unagi roll was great, as unagi rolls tend to be. The "What a Match" roll was interesting; the "match" in question was mackerel, scallions, ginger, and apple. Sounds like it would be weird, but the light sweetness, with a little tartness, of the apple worked surprisingly well. "What a match!" is overstating it, but it wasn't bad at all. The ocean trout was fine, although I had to peel it from the rice to avoid getting a mouthful of wasabi. I swear the first couple times I had sushi there was never wasabi hidden between the fish and the rice in the nigiri, and now it's there every time. What's the point? If you don't want to taste fish you shouldn't be at a sushi place.

Oh, I almost forgot. On Wednesday night we got to the hotel late, only to discover that they had overbooked. We were shunted to the Sheraton, which wouldn't have been that big a deal except that (a) Alma's symposium was in the original hotel and (b) she now had to get back there during morning rush hour. To show they were sorry the hotel sent up wine, cheese, and fruit on Thursday, and then more fruit and bottled water (which sounds cheap until you realize it's $3.75 a bottle in the room) on Friday. The wine was a Riesling ice wine from Germany (making it eiswein), and combined with the cheeses it left me feeling exceedingly good. Most ice wines appear to sell by the half bottle, which I can understand - after (finally) getting the cork out, I probably downed the whole thing (save for the third of a glass that Alma drank, about her limit) in about 20 minutes. If there's such a thing as too drinkable, this was that. Fortunately I never got behind the wheel of a car in DC.

Friday Alma was at the symposium all day, so I slept in and then took the train up to Silver Spring to get some Mega Millions tickets, which I had forgotten to do when in Maryland on Thursday. I didn't win, of course. I also stopped by a Blimpie while up there for a little nostalgia. Sadly, the lettuce and onions they use now (or at this location, anyway) much more closely match those used by Subway, but the bread was distinctly Blimpie. It was all right but nothing special.

I had a weird experience getting back on the Metro; when I put my farecard in, a totally different card - an unused one-week short-trip pass - popped out. I didn't really think about it, which ended up necessitating a long conversation with the station attendant at Judiciary Square. He eventually let me walk out with the pass, which might have been a good deal if I had been planning to do a lot of sight-seeing, but then I wasn't. In fact, I didn't ride the Metro again for the rest of the trip.

Friday night we took a cab out to Flying Fish in Alexandria to meet up with Megan, a friend of Alma's from college and from an online community of which they are both part. Megan's friend Jamina was also present, and let me tell you, if you can finagle your way into a dinner date with three beautiful women, you really owe it to yourself to do it. Conversation was lively, reaching a high point when it was discovered that Jamina was not only from the same city as one of our friends (Craig), but that she had been in the AP class that he student-taught while in college. Small, small world. Jamina, Megan and I polished off a bottle of 2005 Firestone Riesling with dinner (toasted-rice-crusted escolar tuna for me, and I ate a few maguro rolls off the enormous sushi plate that the women ordered; I had no plans to order sushi straight up for myself after having it the previous night), and then preceded dessert by consuming a sake bomb each, yet another first for me. (In case you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's like a Japanese "car bomb" - a shot of sake is balanced on chopsticks over a glass of beer. When you hit the table, the shot drops into the glass and you drink it quickly.) I was worried I wouldn't be able to get down that much beer but it only ended up being about a third of a mug of Kirin, and then I drank it quickly enough that I didn't really notice. That sort of thing, I think, is more about the experience than the taste anyway, and it was fun, as was the whole night. I do think that I had probably ended up a little on the "getting drunk" side of the line by the end of the night, as I started discussing loudly how I had owned a fish that looked exactly like the one in the tank behind us (this was true, it was a blue gourami and I had one named Toronto who may have been my favorite fish ever) and then declaring, "Those clown loaches are enormous!" (They were.) Alma asked Chris, the funny, super-patient waiter, "You're hearing the same conversation I am, right?"

Saturday we headed up to Chevy Chase to see my family. Alma got to meet the Flaxniece, Aurora, who added a major piece to her cuteness arsenal by learning how to walk shortly before we got there. The whole family plus Alma went for tapas in the mid-afternoon, and then Alma and I went with Marian and Sam for sandwiches and ice cream at 9:00 that night. It was kind of like being in college again, with the "late night" food run, and it was good fun. The heartburn from eating too much was not quite as good, reminding me quite heavily that I'm not in college anymore, but let's not let that detract from the overall experience. It was, of course, great to see everyone; my parents were gracious hosts as always and everyone had a good time. I get to go back to Washington in April, but I won't have as much time to spend with them then, so it's good that I was able to get some now.

Alma, Megan, Jamina, Mom, Dad, Marian, Sam, Aurora, Chris the awesome waiter from Flying Fish - thanks for a great trip, everyone!