ABSOLUTE FUCKING PANDEMONIUM

so i've had some marginally interesting things to xanga about lately, but today pretty much takes the cake. oh by the way, if anybody has a video of the game, i'd be willing to give my soul for it. let me start you off with some context:

for four years stoops and i have gone to the vast majority of stanford basketball games, in the sixth man section. having such a great team the past few years means we've been to a lot of fantastic games. ucla-stanford freshman year, when we got upset. stanford-oregon sophomore year (probably the best before today), when tony giovachinni hit a miraculous three and casey went off for about 40 to win. stanford-asu sophomore year when casey went off for 46 to single-handedly carry us to victory. stanford-osu last year when lottich had his coming-out party hitting three after three to take us to the win. and, of course, every stanford-arizona game.

the funny thing is, we've never beaten arizona at home since i've been here, losing a great one freshman year on a last-second baskets, with two titanic teams (10 future nba players in one game). sadly though, we always come up short, which especially sucks because we usually camp out for it. this year, for a variety of reasons, we decided not to camp out.

stoops and i luckily got snuck in early by a friend (nameless for his own safety), which was clutch considering we wouldn't have even gotten on the floor without it, cuz we didn't start lining up till 8 this morning. we were sitting second row, about ten feet left of center, which is even more clutch (more on that later).

about twenty minutes before gametime jim plunkett (former stanford qb, heisman trophy, and super bowl winner) walks up with his wife and sits in the second row of chairs, literally ten feet from me. the guys around me ask him where his super bowl ring is. i beg him to come coach stanford (hey, i gotta try, right?). anyhow, that was already pretty cool. then i spot bill walsh sitting across maples in the media section. that was also pretty damn cool. musburger and dickie V were there for abc. that was also pretty damn cool. the funny thing about dickie V is that everyone hates him when you see him on tv, but then he turns out to be such a nice guy so everyone loves him in person. unfortunately, next week when he's riding duke's cock again, i'll hate him.

just as the game's about to start, i notice there are four seats front row, directly in front of me, that are empty. suddenly, i see an older white man, this unbelievably beautiful mid-20's woman with a gigantic fucking rock on her ring finger, and two other guys walk up to them, in sixth man shirts. i see mike montgomery look across the court, and give the four of them a thumbs up. the third guy out of the four, in a non-descript white nike cap, waves back. then i realize that the woman is tiger woods' fiancee. then i realize the guy who waved back is tiger woods. mother-fucking tiger woods. then i go insane, as does the rest of the sixth man club. we all start chanting tiger woods, forcing him to stand up and wave to everyone. stoops decides that we need to go shake his hand during halftime, even if it means we get thrown out, cuz when will you ever again have the chance to shake the hand of one of the ten greatest athletes to walk the earth? turns out this would've been a bad idea. more on that later.

just a word about chris hernandez: anybody who knows anything about basketball knows that he was absolutely the best player on the floor today. in fact, i'd say that he's turned into one of the best point guards in the country. don't argue with me. you'll lose. anyway, moving on.

so the game starts, and we're pummeling arizona. beating them up inside. denying penetration. contesting shots. the usual stanford basketball. we're up nine at half. some guy next to me at halftime says the terrible terrible words "well, i guess the streak stops at 4." i glare at him because i know he just fucked us. i mean, you can't say shit like that. terrible sports karma. something like that always leads to jinxing yourself. it's almost automatic you'd lose. i want to tell him to take it back, but he never would've understood. idiot.

second half, arizona comes out and starts playing like they should. i'm looking for the dumbass who said we'd win at half. zona's bigger, stronger, faster, quicker than us, and they start playing like it. they get up into our guys, take us out of sets, isolate on offense. force us to take contested shots. get short jumpers. make long ones. it's brutal to watch, because you know this is what it'd be like if they played this hard every night. i don't think it's inaccurate to say if they played that hard and that well every game, they'd go undefeated. they certainly wouldn't lose to crap teams like UW and Cal. i've never seen a team play defense like that. i'm sure lute was pretty proud in the second half.

so eventually, they take the lead 77-73 on a ridiculous salim stoudamire three from about 25 feet as the shot clock ran down. we've got less than a minute left. josh childress makes a free throw and montgomery, out of nowhere, puts on the press. pure genius. we didn't need the ball, there was more than a shot clock left, but there was no way arizona was looking for it. we steal the ball with about thirty seconds, frantically bring it down, swing it around. as the ball's moving from lottich to chris to robinson back to chris to childress, you can just hear the roar get louder. josh hits the gigantic three to tie it. ABSOLUTE PANDEMONIUM. i see old people jumping up and going nuts. the sixth man club is jumping off the bleachers onto the ground, knocking each other over. i actually thought to myself at that moment: "i can't imagine this place ever getting this loud again." SI on campus recently named us as one of the top five student sections in the country. that being said, i can't imagine any place being louder than that. more on that in a moment. 

lute calls a timeout, sets up an iso pick-and-roll play at the top of the key for salim and channing frye. this is dangerous because the two of them have been lighting our boys up all second-half. i remember thinking "damn, there's too much time left on the clock. i still think this streak is gonna catch up with us." they run the clock down. 7 seconds left, lottich and nick robinson trap salim real aggresively, he coughs it up. we're going to overtime! great! nick grabs the loose ball, 2 seconds left, from thirty he throws up a running jumper. as it's in the air, there's this unbelievable silence. it's crazy to think that 9,000 pairs of eyes were doing nothing but watching that ball. i say out loud "it's going in." the balls swishes through the net. ALL FUCKING HELL BREAKS LOOSE. i'm talking COMPLETE UTTER CHAOS. i remember it being so loud that i can't even hear myself think, to the point where there's nothing but white noise in my head. people are leaping over seats to get onto the court. no one even remembers we're supposed to try to go meet the greatest golfer in the world. at one point stoops is on the floor, standing right next to tiger and doesn't even shake his hand. anyhow, we're on the floor for a good half hour, jumping around. i'm hugging people i don't even know. i saw this one guy near tears (i thought: 'whoa, that's probably going too far, but it was that crazy').

eventually, i go back to stoops and will's place to wait out the traffic madness. i walk back over to my car an hour later. lo and behold, it's parked right next to a porsche boxster s. there's a man in a suit opening the door. it's friggin mike montgomery. unbelievable.

anyhow, the end result is that i had the most unbelievable experience of my life. so sixth man tickets over four years have costed me $240. i think that i would be willing to pay $240 just to go have the experience i just had. how's that for money well-spent.

ok, now go read the AP version. watch the video if you can. here's the link to the game:

   hr lady: "hi, this is alexis from broadview international."
   phil: "oh, awesome!"
   hr lady: "umm..."
   phil (in head): "i'm so stupid. i just said 'awesome' before she gave me the news. i'm such a gay-fer."

it's all right, he got the job anyway.

so i went to bay 101 last night, mostly to compare it to garden city and also because i haven't fed my poker addiction in a while. here are my reviews of the two. keep in mind this is in comparison to one another and not, say, the bellagio:

garden city
  positives: they play poker there.
  negatives: you hate your life upon entrance. this is the type of sickening place that makes you wonder where god put all the decent human beings of the world. the place is just pretty dark, dingy, and filthy. it's right next door to a harry's hofbrau and has the exact same ambient characteristics. a word about the people: when you step into the place you feel like you just walked into saigon. not to mention that all of these people talk shit. unfortunately, they're also spending all of their hard-earned money, which is very sad when they have kids at home. word is san jose's vietnamese community has tried to shut garden city down because it's ruining families : |. very sad.

bay 101
  positives: it's not garden city. it's substantially nicer looking. the people look a little less like they'd bet their entire life savings on trips twos instead of sending their kids to college. in general it's about a 5 out of 10 on the poker playing experience meter.
  negatives: it's a little longer drive. you might not get the chance to puke when the first drunk asian fob next to you speaks some incomprehensible english. at garden city you would definitely get to do this

so i played all right. made one really bad read that cost me about 40 bucks. ask me about it if you want, cuz it's pretty epic. ah well. at least i won enough playing 3-6 to pay for my parking ticket and pocket 20 bones. eh, it happens. the most unlucky/worst moment of the night was definitely when i had A9 suited, two 9's flop out. i bet hard cuz there's a flush and straight draw out there. this guy sticks with me the whole way, limping in. so he must have a 9. no flush or straight comes out. i'm thinking this is gonna be excellent when i out-kick his ass. finally on the river he raises, i call him. turns out his 29 offsuit (!?) caught a 2 on the river. his shitty shitty full house on the river clips me. four guys at the table groaned very loudly. that's terrible poker karma. luckily the poker gods made him lose all of his money over the next 45 minutes after that, when he continued to play stupid shit... wonderful :)

jam of the week: damien rice - older chests

so phil started playing a lot of music by this damien rice dude, and i pretty much got hooked on it. he says that he's gonna be real big soon, so i guess i'll sorta be able to say that i jumped on the bandwagon before everybody and their grandmother. it's funny, my winamp playlist is littered with all kinds of hip-hop and r&b, three songs by this dude, and then a coldplay song. i guess that sorta makes me one of those eclectic people. i think i mostly just like those mellow, acoustic pieces from people.

speaking of phil, muthafucka got a new job. he's selling baseballs back to little kids who hit them over the fence into peoples' yards. what he does is he tells the kids that it's his house, charges them 30 bucks, and then secretly jumps the fence to bring the ball back. it's a pretty good trickery. anyhow, his new job means that we're gonna be living in the city, cuz there are lots of baseball fields there. seeing as i know nothing about the city, you people need to suggest places for us to live. throw it up on there.

the word on the street is i'm goin to europe. so i've got like this month and a half between ending school and starting work. i'm tryin to round up a few bodies (not an outrageous number of people) to go with me. who's with me!? nobody. damn it. i'm not actually gonna go for a month and a half, probably more like four weeks. the thing is i haven't even figured out what places i want to go to yet. will says i have to go to london and munich, without question. i really want to go to spain. bonnie really wants to go to italy. phil really wants to go to norway. kingsley really doesn't know where he wants to go. colin'll be there at some point. so basically it'll be crazy.

i'm starting to play a lot of ball again. yesterday i took so many jumpshots that my abs, legs, and wrist were sore as hell today. that's never a good sign. but i played a tad bit better in our im game this week, so that is a good sign. off to ford again tomorrow.

so my favorite columnist, bill simmons, is at the super bowl blogging several times a day. here's a link to wednesday's editions, which are FUNNY AS SHIT. a short summary: simmons is also a writer for the jimmy kimmel show. they decided it'd be funny to dress jimmy's brother Sal up as one of the players and send him to media day. he ended up fooling a lot of stupid media and getting nearly attacked by the actual john kasay of the carolina panthers. great stuff. in the words of bill simmons,"i couldn't make this stuff up."

anyhow, also read monday's, because he puts together this list of hottest women of his generation (which is only slightly older than mine). the idea is to pick women who, 1. at their peak were unbelievably hot, 2. sustained it for a long period of time, and 3. resonate with a large number of males of our generation. i'll go first: alicia silverstone in clueless. true, the movie wasn't all that. true, she's fallen off quite a bit to the point where her show is the worst fucking thing i've ever seen in my life. but i think most guys would agree that she was at the top of the list in that movie. feel free to throw your own in here, but i'll understand if none of you guys can top that...

jam of the week: alicia keys - wake up

woohoo, xanga's back. sort of. well, i'm updating. mike has also miraculously started updating. now if only kingsley or jodon or chris or somebody would do the same. lots o' things been goin on, so here goes:

went up to tahoe this weekend on the suites ski trip. it was pretty sweet to get out on the slopes a little again. my new skis are working out really well. funniest moment of the weekend definitely goes to colin. imagine us standing at the top of this snowy run, looking out over this beautifully green and white valley. colin turns to phil and i, in perfect character: "son, one day all of this will be yours." beautiful. haha. the other funniest moment was when i almost murdered myself traversing horizontally across this mogul run at extremely high speed, thinking that i was real smart for passing up all these slow people on the way back down to the lodge. well, that would've been fine until i realized there was a fence which i was gonna run into perpendicularly. so i dove to the ground and slid about 25 feet to the base of the run, where a bunch of ski school kids gave me nice looks like "oh, it's so sad when old people don't know how to ski." if i didn't love little kids so much i'd hate them. oh, one additional funny moment was when colin was trying to tell this douche not to sleep on the pool table anymore. me, in a drunken stupor, decided colin's method was to slow. so instead i just went up to the kid and said "hey, dumbass, you really need to not sleep on the fucking pool table anymore. stop or we're gonna beat your ass." then i went downstairs and went to sleep.

one result of going up to tahoe, wearing sunglasses, having great weather, and not wearing sunblock is that i now have one of those raccoon tans. you know the type. don't worry, it's really attractive. i'm trying to use it in a way so that women will think of cute furry animals when they see me. unfortunately chances of that working are slim. it's more likely that they'll say to themselves, "hey, that guy went skiing with sunglasses on and didn't wear sunscreen." oh well *shrug*.

let's see, what else? oh, stanford's basketball team is number 2. this is pretty exciting. unfortunately we played cal on saturday and no one gave aj diggs a concussion. if only matt barnes were still around to lay down the law on stupid 5'7 cal "point guards" who can't shoot outside of 10' but talk more shit than mike, larry, and reggie combined. additionally, i think amit tamir will die soon. that's only a hope. i have no actual reason to believe that.

so i finally picked a job. if you're interested in hearing about it, come ask me. but i'd rather not just post about it. the only reason i'm posting is to let you all know that i secured some retribution for all of us who have ever heard the words on the phone "First off, I want to thank you for coming in...". in telling the companies that i'm not gonna work for, i managed to follow the exact form response that those HR people always give applicants. i'm hoping the people on the other end actually thought to themselves "hey, this guy's saying the same shit that i'm supposed to be reading off a goddamn card to people who don't get the job! that's ironic!" unfortunately their thought process was probably more like "hey, this guy's turning us down. fuck him." oh well, i tried : |.

so i tried to go in and play some basketball tonight at ford, because IM's are starting on wednesday. lo and behold, the fucking place was closed! it was amazing! just another great example of stanford sticking it to us in the backside. you figure if you're tossing a bunch of trustees 40 grand a year, they would keep a gym open 24 hours a day. is that really SO much to ask? i sure don't think so.

phil: "yeah, i'm gonna be tutoring sacred heart prep this quarter."
phil's mom: "you're going to be tutoring high school kids? well watch out."
p: "why?"
pm: "because it's illegal."
p: "what?"
pm: "you know. if you want to get yourself one of them."

i didn't really want to update, but phil's mom's quote above inspired me. not in a 'hey, i need to go get a high school girl' kind of way. more in a 'hey, that's a funny quote. i need to write a xanga so i can use it as a quote up top' kind of way. keep in mind that phil's mother is an asian woman. specifically a filipino woman. which makes her crazy AND asian. beat that with a stick.

school's been pretty sweet so far. i'm taking SOC160 on the advice of mr. john stoops. it seems like a pretty cool class and i'm actually excited about the readings. i'm also taking a course on China (the country, not the plates). that one should be... interesting... i guess. other than that i'm taking two lectures serieses. that's 12 units. and i'm loving it.

i was up taking a long run in the hills today, and i saw these two women running up the steep slope pushing baby carriages. you ever had that instantaneous occasion where your original feeling of accomplishment is crushed in a split second? that was me. i think no matter how far i ran today, i would've felt like a total schmuck. maybe i should go buy a baby carriage and run pushing it. then i'd feel a little tougher. and more tired. hmm. this isn't a bad idea...