Holy Crap

It has been a REALLY long time since I blogged. And goddammit have I missed it. There is just something so special about a Family Guy you've never seen before. Stewie is a homicidal maniac.

Can you believe we're going to have another baby??? I've never been happier. Things at work are great, things at home are wonderful. Life is an awesome thing. Just want to share this feeling more, which is why I guess it's a good thing Baby Boy is on his way...

Why is Glenn Beck still on the air anywhere in the world? He is so misguided. Just quoted the founder of PR, Edward Bernays, and then went into a diatribe about his opinions. The man created PR. He proselytized about propaganda. Yet Beck is holding him up as a representative of all that is wrong with modern day government.

Trying to mind control you with their advanced systems which somehow are too woefully inadequate to actually govern. Guess that's just the left's agenda.

I mean Jaysus Larrrd.

EDITORS NOTE: What do I know about TV?

Let me start a ways after the beginning. Treme is fantastic televsion. Music, cops, lawyers, restaurants. Best of all TV worlds. Smart, sharp writing. Makes you realize why you loved TV in the first place. Reminds me, at least, why I picked up a pen in the first place (more on that coming soon). The love for New Orleans oozes out of the pores of this show.

I have to say, I've never been more wrong. That hockey game I wrote about last night was out of this world, and rated as highly as any in 36 years. Deservedly so!

In the middle of an episode of Treme when our intrepid hero, a Chef who has been dealing with city gas giving out on her on a regular basis in a high pressure situation comes through.

Not unlike the refs, the league, the players and the fans in that high class affair in South Philly. Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. I acknowledge its majesty, and thank all for wonderful fun. As my little bro would say, Hawks, City of Chicago -- Mazel, Mazel.

Finals

Is there anything more exciting? Well, lord I hope so, since I'm not playing, and really don't even have a rooting interest in either of these teams. Oh, and #hockeyblows.

That said, as far as sporting events go, a game six in Philly, practically sudden death as they trail 3-2 with under five to play. You kind of knew this would happen. Great series.

But the omnipresent sense of, well, finality, is really the overwhelming emotion. Particularly at home, for a team that has done nothing but come back time and time again. Shootout with the Rangers months ago just to get in.

Down3-0 to the Boston Bruins, that first win seemingly an anomaly till they strung together three more and made history.

Now an enormous underdog to the West's best. Not really the West, but Chi-town. A team without a title since '61. Knick-esque in their fecundity.

Overtime now, hanging on by a thread.

And it's over. In the blink of an eye names are etched forever onto that noble cup. Even for non-hockey fans (a group which I count myself among) it's clear that this is a special moment in time. To be the best team after a marathon season. Names like Kane and Toews bring joy to hockey fans in a city that has not shared in supremacy for half a century. That will make you a hero fast, and Chicago is a town that loves its sports heroes.

But seriously, though, NHL. Does your sport truly move so fast that there is no technological means of determining whether a goal was scored or not? Can the entire season be decided in so anticlimactically that the vast majority of fans, players and officials had absolutely no idea it was through.

That to me reinforces every rating point lost by this sport over the past 25-years. Even as HD reigns supreme and the game moves further down the cable dial (how anachronistic is that thought) there is just no way to present this sport in a meaningful way to a broader audience.

Bring back the Hanson brothers, and thank God this crap is off TV for a few months, to be honest. How come the Olympics were pristine and perfect, and the majority of these playoffs, even with amazing storylines and great towns involved, were so thoroughly unwatchable...

Reunion weekend begins

with a separation. Beautiful wife, staying home. Maybe catching a movie with my brother. The ladybug and I head north a click, to Freehold Boro by way of Old Bridge. Big night. ha!

Should be interesting though. FHS Class of '90. A stalwart bunch if ever there was one. I'm a proud representative!

It's interesting to note, that without FB these things might be much different. You at least have a working knowledge of where your closest acquaintances have ended up.

Your friends, one assumes, you would know where they lived, worked, wed, etc.

Long list of former high schoolers, you expect a pretty good deal of attrition. Proving that the class President title lasts a lifetime, Kerri Martin is doing a wealth of the organizing.

All I'm doing is showing up. Well, bringing my iTunes and my notePad. Check in tomorrow for more. And @bitterbill.

PEACE

woefully underprepared

I realized today that this is very often my issue, and was with the proposed tournament of cities as well as the bachelor party that preceded it and the home flooding that followed.

I had no pump, no generator, no nothing. I get a foot of water in my basement after this tree snaps an overhead electrical wire and lands on my yard looking like this

and my basement like this


What can you do? People make plans and God laughs. More on this to come. City Sixty-Four needs to be put on hold for one year...

Automatic berths begin rolling in, selection committee hard at work

So I’m stuck on a plane in Harrisburg (which has no shot of making the tournament by the way) and wanted to get this out before I take off again. Flight diverted from Indy, which made a great case this weekend for a high seed.

A couple of automatic berths surprised me this weekend. Santa Barbara, incredible beach town, makes the grade and lives to fight another day. Other similarly sized automatics include Roanoke, VA and Charleston, SC.

This is going to be fun. The full field is listed out below, bracketology to follow…

New York	Phoenix	Orlando
Miami	Washington, DC	Tampa
Los Angeles	Boston	New Orleans
Chicago	Seattle	Detroit
Cleveland	Dallas	Buffalo
Portalnd	Houston	San Diego
Philadelphia	San Antonio	San Francisco
Charlotte	Oklahoma City	Minneapolis
Atlanta	Milwaukee	Indianapolis
Cincinatti	Providence	Jacksonville
St. Louis	El Paso	Hartford
Kansas City	Baltimore	Pittsburgh
Nasvhille	San Jose	Omaha
Memphis	Columbus	Newark
Denver	Albuquerque	Las Vegas
Oakland	Tucson	Reno
Sacramento	Anchorage	Billings
Austin	Lexington	Salt Lake City
Tulsa	Birmingham	Sioux City
Honolulu	Boise	Bismarck
Raleigh	Rochester	Louisville
Colorado Springs	Irvine	Fresno/Sacramento
Wichita	Spokane	Long Beach
Madison	Des Moines	Virginia Beach

So there you have it. The 70 plus cities that have a chance to make it into the final grid. Any automatic berths I’m missing? Send ‘em in.

This includes a play in game between Fresno and Sactown, too good to pass up. There are probably other cities that deserve that type of offer, but my heart leans to @Tlack415 Homerville.

Basic rule. Any city that you don’t inherently know what state it’s in is pretty much automatically ruled out (sayonara LBC, California, by the way). Other unwritten ruled include uniqueness, lack of suburbia. Baton Rouge may get an automatic berth for that reason, even though they didn’t rank high enough for inclusion in the at large field.

Home of college hoops

So the day of flight begins. Difficult at first, then beaming into a bloody mary, the stewardess having to hold back a grim excitement. Perhaps she now realized it was almost noon on Friday. No, we still have Chicago to get to, flip an hour back, then down to Indy. A short 55 minute flight. Who knows what to expect.

I do know that I have six more drink tickets, scratch that seven. Each drink is only one here at @southwest! Yeah!!! I don’t fly Southwest that often any more, living, as I do, in the Northeast. But enough about that, that’s @bitterbill territory.

I’m here to focus on the brackets. March Madness is in full swing if you look at the calendar and caliber of play. Big East Tourney and Big 12 surely to make headlines. Going to Indy, home of the NCAA and the Big Ten tourney. Hoping to catch a game.

Basketball’s birthplace, or close enough. Rabid fans in the year I know more about hoops than in any time during my sportswatching life. I’m on a fantasy team.

But this is just one factor of many. Only fitting that this journey begins as I visit a new city for the first time. Stopover in Chicago, one of my all time favorites and a most likely 1 seed, to Indianapolis. A solid mid major, but where will she go? Shall I wait till after this weekend? I believe I shall.

So here is how it is going to work. I’ve got probably 70-80 cities on a list. This week we have to figure out who is on the bubble and get rid of them.
Rochester, Irvine. Do we even bother? No suburbs, Evansville, Tucson. Right?

Anyway, with no further ado. The field as I see it.

Not going to influence seeding yet, but do with this what you will.

New York
Los Angeles
Miami
Chicago.

See a top seed I’ve missed? Talk about in the comments.