MoMA

K1's friend Merv is in town this week for a moot court competition. He came to the city a few days early so he could hang out. He's currently staying with S1 out in Brooklyn.

Today, J1 and I met them for brunch/lunch at Clinton Street. The food, as usual, was excellent. Also as usual, I ate far more food than I needed. But....it was so damn yummy. What's a foodie supposed to do?

Rio and Merv after lunch:


And me, J1, and S1 too:


After lunch, we wandered around the LES, stopping at Guss' Pickles.


Merv ready to open the container of pickled okra he just purchased.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Merv dropped the lid on the extremely dirty sidewalk, inside down. Consequently, we had to make a trip back to Guss' to get a new lid.

Then, J1 went to work and S1, Merv and I headed up to the MoMA. I love the MoMA. It is such an open, comforting space. I took a few pictures, mostly of incredibly phallic artwork.


I love this chair.

New Adventures in Tooldom

Some people are just an endless source of amusement in and of themselves. This is because they're crazy. Just to be clear, this is a case of "laughing at them, not with them."

So today S2 is walking down the hall, when a well-known weirdo comes up to him. Well, screw it. I'll just let S2 tell you in his own words.

"[Insert name here] is so crazy dude. I just saw him in the hallway on my way to class. No 'hello', no 'how are you?', nothing like that. Just (as I'm quickly walking by in a clear rush):

"'Have you filled out your bar application yet? You know it's online right? It just got posted so I just did it in class. What are you waiting for? Aren't you going to do it? It's definitely online right now.'

"I am not even kidding you."

I really feel that nothing I say can add to this.

Thoughts in flight

J1 and I came back from Cali yesterday. We had a good time, but more on that later. What I must talk about right now are the number of annoying people who I encountered on the airplane, and how they are a drain on society.

The tattle-tail: We were sitting at the gate in Burbank, waiting for pre-flight preparations to finish. People were listening to iPods, reading, sleeping, and talking on their cell phones. As the flight attendant walked past, the woman behind us stopped him.

"Excuse me, sir," she said. "You need to make an announcement to tell people to stop talking on their phones. It's time to turn them off."

"Well, we will make that announcement when it's time, ma'am," he replied.

Come on. Did you also have to raise your hand and tell the teacher when people were passing notes in class? Do you call the police station and tell them that someone passed you on the freeway when you were going the speed limit, so obviously the must have been speeding?

Get a grip, and stop trying to tell other people how to live their lives and how to do their jobs.

The Sprawler: The guy sitting next to me was a sprawler. Listen...an airplane is like the back seat of a car when you were eight years old and taking a trip across the country with your siblings. Ok, so when you were eight years old and taking trips across the country, you were in an airplane, you say? Fine. How nice for you to have been rich. We drove, and I was crammed into the back seat of a Ford Escort with my two siblings. No, I'm not the least bit bitter.

Anyway, back to my point. Being on an airplane is like being in the back seat of the car with your siblings. There are clear demarcations of space, and only someone who is completely rude would ignore these boundaries.

Memo to the dude next to me: Your knee/thigh should not be in the area of my seat. I should not have to lean to the side to avoid a romantic shoulder tango with you. And I certainly should not have to reach under your arm to change my TV channels.

Seriously, on JetBlue, the space divisions are so obvious. The armrest with my TV controls are my space. Your space starts immediately past the edge of my armrest and extends to the far edge of your armrest. Monkeys could figure this out.

The Encroachers: This is similar to the previous category, but it is a more general problem. I am talking about people who instead of taking their neighbor's space instead take space from everyone on the plane. Ah yes....I speak of the dreaded "aisle creep."

Once again, we are talking about simple logic here. The aisle is not part of your seat. Just because you are sitting next to the aisle does not give you the right to put your leg, arm, elbow, or shoulder into the space of the aisle. And if you do, and if someone happens to bump your arm, do not give that person a nasty look as if it is their fault that you were hit.

Listen, I had nothing to do with placing your body parts in the way of everyone else. I'm not going to hit you on purpose, but I'm also not going to spend seven minutes inching down the aisle to ensure that I miss all the protruding body parts. It's like parking someone into a parallel parking space and then being angry when you come back to a scraped bumper.

California Dreaming

Tomorrow, J1 and I leave for California. I have to say I'm pretty damn excited about it. The weather in NYC has turned cold over the last few days (it is still winter, after all). Southern California, on the other hand, is basking in sunshine and temperatures in the 70s.

In addition, I'm certainly ready to have some time away from New York. Even though last week was spring break, I really just want some time to relax and kick it. California seems like an ideal place for that.

While we're there, we should be able to see the dearly departed K1 and Jammie. Plus, there is apparently a trip to DisneyLand in the works for Thursday. I'm going to let you guess who is more excited about this -- me or J1.

Besides, as the ultimate reason for a trip to California, it gives me the chance to skip class (although due to my schedule, I'll only be missing two classes).

Pistons vs. Knicks

On Friday, I finally got my long-awaited Valentine's Day gift when J1 and I went to the Garden to see the Pistons take on the Knicks. I was very excited, because I haven't had the chance to see Detroit play in almost three years (since the 2003 playoffs).

We had very nice tickets in the third tier across from the Knicks' bench. Since it was St. Patrick's Day, the Knicks were wearing their special green St. Paddy's unis, which meant that the Pistons got to wear their crisp home whites.

We had lots of fun at the game, although I was rather disappointed by the outcome. After Rasheed Wallace and Rip Hamilton got ejected in the third quarter, the Knicks managed to squeak out a 105-103 win. I really would have liked to see Detroit win, but at least I go to see them play.

The Pistons huddle up during a time-out in the second quarter


Eddy Curry attempts a free throw in the fourth

Parting NCAA Shots

Hey Greensboro Coliseum! The mid 90s called. They want their color scheme back.



Seriously, this color scheme looks so dated.

Is Crean Overrated?

I always kind of made the assumption that Marquette coach Tom Crean was a good tournament coach. He comes from the Tom Izzo tree, has a Final Four on his resume, and a 4-2 overall record in the NCAAs.

But on further inspection, here's what you find: With Dwayne Wade, he's 4-1 and made the Final Four. Without him, he's 0-1, about to become 0-2 (with Marquette trailing Alabama), and has only two other NCAA tournament apperances.

So maybe Crean was lucky to have one of the most incredible basketball players of the last decade on his squad, rather than having great coaching abilities.

Another missed chance

Winthrop fell short in their bid to upset Tennessee. Tennessee hit a turn-around from the corner (foot on the 3-point line) with 0.4 seconds left to win 63-61. It was an absolutely fantastic game -- close all the way, with both teams playing well throughout (although Winthrop went through a bad shooting slump in the second half that probably cost them the game). I'm still waiting for a real upset. While Montana looks like it will take down Nevada, I don't think a 12 beating a five qualifies as a real upset, since it happens at least once a year.

Pacific Falls Short

The 13th-seeded Pacific Tigers fell just short in their effort to knock off 4-seed Boston College. BC is a perennially overrated team that generally folds under pressure in the tournament.

The game was a double-overtime thriller, and was much closer than the eventual 88-76 score indicated. Unfortunately, Pacific didn't execute down the stretch at the end of the first overtime. If they had (they had a six-point lead with two minutes to go), they should have won.

Instead, we'll have to wait for someone else to pull off the first epic upset of the tournament. With Withrop hanging with Tennessee, maybe it will happen soon.

Wow....

Alabama needs to get rid of these uniforms. Talk about awkward and ugly.

As if the Devil weren't annoying enough....

Duke's men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is the devil. Not only does he coach the Blue Devils, but he has a devilish gleam in his eye. Besides, you have to be the evil one to pretend to be the most classy guy in the world while getting massive amounts of fawning press and then scream obscenities at refs for the entire game. The guy is basically the second coming of Bob Knight -- a talented coach who is also a complete asshole. But because the media loves Coach K (the man needs a toilet paper endorsement contract to wipe all the media slobber off his ass), we never hear about his tirades.

And this is a guy who has his own website (I refuse to link to it) which has the headings "Teacher, Father, Leader, Motivator, Student, Coach, Friend, Mentor." It has an upcoming feature where you can share your Coach K story -- How has Coach K affected your life?

Clearly, this guy is not lacking ego.

Anyway, Mr. Devil got even more irritating last year when he got an American Express endorsement deal. He's a coach, yet we have to see him in nationally televised spots (basically he's getting free recruiting face-time) talking about how wonderful he is.

But even worse, he now is also doing commercials for Chevy. They are some of the worst commercials on television right now -- the copy is terrible and it doesn't even make sense. It's basically like Chevy is saying, "We have Coach K in our commercials. Therefore, you will want to buy our cars." It's a completely illogical assumption.

A Small Bracket Tip

Well, the best time of year is upon us, with March Madness ready to tip off in fewer than 24 hours. If you haven't yet filled out your brackets, here's some statistical data that could give a small edge.

The tie-breaker in most pools is the the person who most closely predicted the combined score of the championship game. While ties are relatively unlikely in a small pool, it's still worth thinking about likely combined scores so that you can make as good of a prediction as possible.

I looked at the combined scores from the last 21 NCAA championship games (1985-2005). Scores ranged from an outlier-low 116 (2002) to 176 (1990).

The mean for the period was 149; the median was 148.

However, two things bothered me about that data. First, it covers a broad period during which the NCAA game has undergone many changes. Second, that ugly 2002 game between Maryland and Indiana is a completely statistical anomaly.

Narrowing the data to games played in the era when early draft entry changed the complexion of the college game (1997-2005), and throwing out the 2002 game, we get eight games with a score range from 145-165. Not surprisingly, the average is just under 155.

This seems like a good figure, but testing it against the data (in other words, how far off were you each year) shows that you get a high level of variance. Consequently, I think it needs to be adjusted down slightly.

In the end, 151 seems like a good number to me. It's fairly close to many of the games played in the mid- to high-140s, but isn't too far below the games in the upper 150s.

So I'll be putting 151 for my combined score in any pools I enter. If you want to use this number, feel free, unless you're betting against me.

More Big East Tourney Action

So as if my foray into Madison Square Garden for the opening round of the Big East Tournament wasn't enough, I managed to get another night of basketball for the quarter-final games last Thursday. The added bonus was that a.) the tickets were free and b.) they were in a skybox.

How did I get these tickets, you ask? Well, it's a good question. I'm still not sure I know the answer. Basically, A1 got them through work. It was one of those "friend of a friend who had a vendor who gave them to him" sort of things. Through a process of attrition, A1 and I ended up with them. (We went down to MSG with four guys, but there ended up only being two tickets for us. Two of the guys weren't that into seeing the games anyway so they just headed to a bar, and generously let A1 and I take the tickets.)

Anyway, the games were fun, although nothing matched the drama of the Syracuse last-second win in the first round. But that game is going to be an absolute classic. And frankly, despite the nice padded seats of the skybox, and the unlimited food (with nary a vegetarian option in sight), I think the view from the "cheap seats" is actually better. But that's ok. It was a damn good time, and it was free. That's a good combination in my opinion.

Villanova runs a play on Rutgers in the first half.


During a time-out, the Rutgers Dance Team performs.


A1 and I chilling in style.

Typo of the Day

From a user-generated restaurant review at MenuPages:

"Their food tastes almost as good as my mom."

I'm not sure you want to be sharing that information with the rest of the world.