Upsets and hang overs

Last night Ryan, Kristen, Keri and Byrnie came over to check out the new pad. We got some food from the Smokehouse and watched hoops. Doesn't sound like much, eh?

Things got better. We ended up drinking half the town of Brookline and now I can barely type. Man, we had a lot to drink and the house looks like a bomb hit it. I mostly stayed on the side of beer, but Byrnie and Rye made some mammoth rum and Cokes. They ended up staying over until about 1:00 am or so. Then I went to bed and attempted to watch "Diff'rent Strokes".

The cool thing about our new cable company is that they have a bunch of free stuff on their On-Demand channel. One of which is a bunch of old reruns. They have "Maude", "The Partridge Family", "Starskey and Hutch" and a bunch of other stuff. It's interesting in a whole, I remember that episode sort of way. But it also sort of sucks because the shows aren't as good as I remember.

For instance, on DS, I remember thinking that everything about that show was cool. The house, Arnold and Willis' one liners, Ms. Garrett. Now when I watch it, the show is nothing but a laugh track with a few lines thrown in. The stories are flimsy and full of so many holes that it's tough to watch it without a million questions coming to mind. The one that I watched on Thursday had Mr. D's new landlord coming up to the house to tell the Drummonds that they were being booted. Too many drugs? Wild parties? Bigotry? Pets?

No. It's because the Drummond household had a preteen living in the apartment. He shows the lease to Mr. D and of course, after looking at it for a total of 20 seconds, he is completely flumoxed. "Looks like we're in trouble kids," is all that he could muster. Oh yeah, then they tried to dress Arnold up in stilts and pass him off as Willis' older brother Arthur.

Save the stilts. First off, bring the contract to a lawyer. He can think of something. Secondly, have you ever heard of the Fair Housing Act? You can't throw people on their asses because of age, race, gender or religion. Yet, they take this shit lying down. The only way that they were able to stay in the place is because Arnold spied the landlord (who looked like Steve Martin) having an affair.

The landlord's wife was furious when Arnold innocently brought it up in front of her. In about 12 seconds, the losing of the apartment was completely dropped. The Drummonds didn't even get a chance to use Arnold's news as leverage or blackmail. It really didn't make sense ... and I was sober on Thursday night.

Last night though, I was wrecked. So I had to watch the show with one eye closed because I was seeing double.

What was the cause of my drinking? A little thing called March Madness. Up until 7:00 last night, I was cruising right along: 19-5, none of my Sweet 16s had lost and a few of my upset specials were working it for me. Then came the Syracuse/Vermont game. And here's the main reason why I don't bet: this game was awesome, lead changes, holy-shit! shots were made, the underdog Catamounts were really giving it to the heavily favored Orangemen and all I could do was sit there and watch as one of my Final Fours flamed out.

It drove me insane watching missed picks, sloppy passes, retarded shots become the norm for the Orange. They were supposed to be one of the top teams of the Big East, but they blew it. Because I was so dispondent over the Cuse loss, I didn't get to see Kansas lose to the Bucknel Bison. There goes another Elite Eight team, right in the old crapper.

But, that's college hoop and why I love this time of year. There's nothing better than that first Thursday when you fill in your brackets, look at them and say, "Yup, this is the year I have everything all figured out. No way none of my picks are going down." And every year the sheet ends up looking like downtown Beirut. My only consolation is that I bet a lot of people took Kansas and Syracuse very far.

At least, that's my hope.