Yes, laziness is behind the lack of posts since last month. Yet give March Madness its due, that mind-numbing marathon of college basketball viewership that is as good an annual checkup as any about my resistant progress into full-fledged adulthood. For those out of the know, every year for the past decade I've gathered with the same group of college friends to watch the same four days of games, eat the same Chicago style pizza and tell the same jokes. Only the beer has changed, upgraded from days of Ice House 30-packs to four-packs Goose Island Bourbon Stout. Oddly, the latter costs more than the former.
This year's Madness, a competitively dull affair that not even a few speculative parlays couldn't energize, marked the end of an era for me as host. My three-year term as M.O.P has run its course, with next year's festivities moved to Seattle, Grand Rapids or whereabouts unknown. It just won't be in my living room, which had transformed to upscale frat house for four days each of the past three years. You probably don't know too many wives or labradors living in frat houses, part of the reason this set up never made much sense to begin with. It required more understanding from Mrs. Attorney than Bill Raftery has onions.
It was with great relief that I watched this year's Madness party disband, the living room's stadium seating returned to the shed and the secondary television removed from in front of the fire place. All good things must come to an end, but I'm not uncertain of this event's virtue these days. The pizza tastes like sleeping on a futon until 11 a.m. on a Thursday without repercussion. I value that sentimentality, but its cost inflates by the year. Conversations of crawling are now about infants, not tavern variety. There's more talk about what we left behind for the weekend than what we left it for. Will the Madness continue? The proceedings leaving my house will help. But this four-day college reenactment may be a production that's starting to run long.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
whoa. i'm catching up on some 'light' reading here and this is what I see?
I don't know pete ... questioning the madness? It's like watching the Pope attend a bar mitzvah, seeing Lindsay Lohan not inebriated, or watching Rick Barnes outcoach a rock ... it doesn't happen.
And while the past few trips to South Bend have always been more nostalgic in my mind than actuality I'm not ready to throw in the towel.
Since the Great Northwest is already chosen for next year I can't change it then, but perhaps I could offer a few suggestions for two years out ... consider it 'a modest proposal' ..
1) The gluttony has become too much in my opinion. I love pizza but maybe not that much. Perhaps alternative dining options could be enforced.
2) the gluttony isn't just with the food ... I loved the over-saturation of two tvs but i'm wondering if it isn't time to return to our roots of one tv which forces more of a unification
3) To enhance that unity ... no laptops or other work endeavors. When you're there, you're there. I know I'm guilty of that but I think the laptop has killed conversation, etc.
4) I LOVE betting but w/ these new internet laws, we need to go insular. All betting needs to happen 'in house.' That way money is changing hands regardless of outcome and it gives people bragging rights over others, opens up the potential for jersey wearing and non-monetary wagers, etc. This could be a good thing for the madness.
5) Non-basketball related activity. Whether it be ice-skating, golf, roller derby, cow tipping, or tetherball, I feel it's important to get 'off-site' for some bonding time, non-bball related.
Consider that the opening salvo to my 'March Madness Bill of Rights' ... I am opening the floor to other delegates to add/delete as they see fit, but those are my thoughts.
Then maybe we get it back to what it was, friends hanging out with friends.
Post a Comment