Monday, March 05, 2007

Poor Ann

Apparently Ann Coulter has made a habit of calling Democratic men "faggot", "homo" and other derogatory terms. I think it's clear that she's so full of herself that she's determined that any male that has the great good sense not to want to bonk her skinny, skanky self must be gay, right?

Guess I'm gay too...

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Bill Simmons Gets It

Via Ed Cone, Bill Simmons get it exactly right in his Page Two blogpost today. In addition to slagging Billy FudgePacker (we need MORE of that) and doing a great Coach Rat impression had the situation been reversed, he also had this to say about the two centers:

but at least Hansbrough should evolve into a more polished version of a Madsen/Scalabrine-type bench player, one of those tough cookies who knows his limitations and doesn't do anything he can't do. McRoberts? Not a chance. He's like a homeless man's Darko Milicic. And that's not a compliment.


I'm not convinced that he's right about Hansbrough not being an NBA starter, although guys like Pete Chilcutt and Joe Wolf made a good living playing 12-15 minutes a game backing up their teams' centers and power forwards and NBA coaches will not mind at all looking down the bench and seeing a tough guy like Hansbrough ready to come in. But I think Tyler's good enough and tough enough and works hard enough that he's going to make a difference in the pros (particularly if he continues to work on his outside shot). I just hope we don't find out for another couple of years.

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Okay, Sometimes I'm a Little Slow

It's not that I didn't like Steely Dan. I bought their first 45 Do It Again and had a couple of their later albums (Royal Scam and Aja) but I never collected their entire catalogs the way I did bands like Chicago and the Doobie Brothers. It probably took (of all things) the soundtrack of "Me, Myself and Irene" and the covers of a number of older Steely Dan songs for me to really get it. So a couple of weeks ago I dropped $50 on Amazon in exchange for the first six Steely Dan CDs, from Can't Buy a Thrill to Aja (I didn't get Gaucho but probably will later).

Lordy.

I know the guys weren't exactly in high school when the first album came out - they were in their mid-twenties - but I can't think of a more sophisticated debut album. And unlike the aforementioned 70's bands, it sounds pretty timeless. Pull out your copy of the first disk and listen to Reelin' in the Years again - the sarcastic lyrical putdowns and the memorable Elliott Randall guitar solos - and see if it doesn't sound as fresh today as it did 35 years ago.

I realize that those of you who are longstanding Dan-fans are thinking "great, Tony P is going to next tell us that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west" and yeah, I realize I'm being Captain Obvious here but they do say that converts are the biggest fanatics. I'm thinking I'm a fanatic now.

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As If I Needed More Reasons to Hate Dook

I don't know whether I was more pissed off at Billy Packer or the Rat at the end of the Dook-Carolina game Sunday - I was more pissed at both of them more than at Gerald Henderson, although attempts to portray him as anything other than a thug are laughable. Packer's strident cries that this was all an accident and that they should play on were juxtaposed against incessant replays that showed over and over again that the foul was intentional and flagrant and against a crowd that was ready to tear every Dookie in the building apart limb by limb. The fact that they did not is a tribute to the way the refs worked this and the fact that they came to the right decision. Packer's not only a Wake Forest homer, he's a charter member of the ABC (Anybody But Carolina) club so it was certainly not a surprise that he was so defensive about whoever was playing UNC. It reminded me of nothing more than listening to Keith Jackson desperately trying to explain away Ohio State coach Woody Hayes hitting a Clemson player in the 1978 Gator Bowl. All the while the replays are clearly showing Charlie Baumann running down the sideline and Hayes reaching out to try to cold-cock him. I always figured Jackson was motivated by love of the game and dislike of controversy, but Packer was just hatin' as he usually does.

On some level, it was just Dook being Dook. There's no other team that is more consistently thuggish while maintaining some fiction of being "classy" (whatever the hell that means) and while being all sensitive and crying at the drop of a hat (can't forget McRoberts bawling on the bench after fouling out against UNC in the first game - that was almost as good as Bobby Hurley crying on the sidelines after King Rice help him to one assist against 10 turnovers). There have been a couple of Dook players that Carolina fans managed to not despise. It was hard to find Grant Hill haters even in Chapel Hill and Mike Gminski always seemed to be a decent guy. As Wayne Ellington's best bud, Gerald Henderson might have gotten a pass but now he'll no doubt be up there with Christian "the Stomper" Laettner, Bobby "Crybaby" Hurley, Wojo and Chrissy Collins. Lordy do we hate those guys - and now Henderson gets to join that dubious fraternity of whiny Dook thugs. Heh.

I purposely held off on reading Will Blythe's book on the Carolina-Dook rivalry until the last couple of weeks and managed to read the final chapter between the women's victory in the ACC Tournament at 3 and the start of the men's game at 4. Excellent read and a great lead-in for a classic game! As if I needed justification for hating the evil that is Dook.

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