DOWN WITH PANTS!

Last night we played soccer in what can only be described as the wettest of conditions.

For the first 15 minutes, it hailed heavily. Little razor blades of ice fell from the sky punishing any exposed skin. My ears felt like they were being stuck with pins, my hands went completely numb, I was afraid to head the ball because I thought my head would explode like an ice sculpture dropped on the floor upon impact.

The hail finally let up, but the inch of standing water on one side of the field – the side I spent most of my night on – sucked in your foot with every step. I nearly lost my shoe to the mud on several occasions. I took numerous faces full of kicked water. Once, I put my entire foot on a ball kicking it extremely hard only to have it stay in the exact spot that I left it while I went running by.

It was absolutely miserable. Even the game that we played in 9 degree weather in December wasn’t that miserable. By the end of the game everybody on the field looked like a drowned rat. It passed the point of comedy – I actually enjoy playing in adverse weather conditions, it at least can be comical – to being a dangerous slog.

Making it even more miserable was that we didn’t have a referee and we played an overly testosterone fueled team of rugby players. There were numerous collisions, overtly overaggressive plays, a pair of incidental handballs that had people so mad that it easily could’ve escalated past arguing. It was a game that needed a referee.

But the league that we pay good money to play in can’t seem to get referees to do their games. Our captain, a referee himself, said that we’ll be lucky to have a ref for one or two games this season. Great.

The good news to come out of the game is we won, 2-1. Considering they had six guy subs to our one and appeared to be a more skilled team, it was a surprising outcome.

I played OK, I’m still struggling to do some soccer basics, like kicking the ball. I had an opportunity at what should’ve been an easy goal. All I had to do was not kick the ball right at the goalie and I’d have had just my second goal of my short soccer career. Well, I didn’t kick the ball at the goalie, but I also didn’t kick it at the goal. Somehow I barely got a foot on it and it went across the goal and into the corner. What’s funny is that normally I’d agonize over missing that goal for days, but I was so distracted by being so wet and so cold that until typing this paragraph, I hadn’t even thought about it.

So let’s get to the Too Much Information part of this post: My nipples seriously hurt. It is 7:00 AM and we are now going on 12 hours of permanent, painful tittie hard-on. Seriously, they’ve been rock hard since the game and they hurt like a motherfucker. I don’t know what to do to get them not to hurt. I guess I’ll just have to wait it out. I’m sure it’ll go away pretty soon.

Anyway, now that I’ve put that image in your head….enjoy your day! Hopefully my rock hard nipples won’t haunt you too much.

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It’s 6:15 AM, I’m sitting here at work (I know, I should be working) in my unwashed Washington Huskies jersey that I’ve been wearing for every game for the past two weeks – you don’t wash that luck out during a steak – and I am seriously excited, nervous and very restless about tonight’s game, a mere 10 hours away.

The day has already gotten off to a bit of an auspicious beginning. I was about five minutes late for work – missing my morning meeting that starts promptly at 5:59 AM even though our shift starts at 6:00 AM – because I couldn’t find my wallet anywhere. Luckily, it occurred to me that I was laying on the ground in Addie’s room when she went to bed, so I snuck in and there it was, on her floor, and I did it without waking her up. The problem is, the game tips off before I get off at 4:30, so I was hoping to leave early but asking to leave early after being late isn’t the best idea. Oh well, I don’t care, I’m still leaving early to get myself in front of a TV.

I was thinking about telling you about the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life, which is totally Washington Huskies/college basketball related. However, trying to keep it positive today, I’ll tell you about when my real love for Washington Huskies basketball began.

It was 2004 and things looked very bleak and typical for the Huskies, another disappointing season going into the books. But after a big loss to Oregon State that dropped them to 0-5 in Pac-10 play, Nate Robinson, Brandon Roy, Will Conroy, Curtis Allen, Bobby Jones and Mike Jensen went on a tear winning 11-of-13 games leading up to a season finale against undefeated and #1 ranked Stanford. The whole city was abuzz about Huskies basketball and you just got this feeling that the Stanford game was going to be something really special to attend.

I HAD to go to the game, but so did everybody else in the Seattle area. The game was completely sold out and I did not have a ticket but I figured I might be able to get one outside of Hec Edmundson Pavilion before the game. So I headed down to the arena an hour and a half before game time with $40 in my pocket - the most I was able to spend – hoping to score a ticket..

Unfortunately, when I got there, it became clear that I wasn’t the only one without a ticket hoping to get into the game. There were tons of people standing around with one finger in the air unwilling to pay the $150 price that scalpers were trying to get for their tickets. With about 20 minutes left before tip-off, I gave up trying to find a ticket and instead hightailed it back to the car to get myself to a bar to watch the game on TV, but I figured that while I was walking back to the car, I might as well keep that finger in the air and keep pitching for a ticket. About 20 feet from the car, I hear from behind me, “hey man, you need a ticket? My friend decided not to come and I have an extra.” And he gave it to me for face value, though I think I gave him an extra five dollars and I may have bought him a soda at halftime.

And the game WAS something special. The Huskies took it to Stanford the entire game and drilled the Cardinal 75-62. The euphoria in the building was something that I don’t think can ever be replicated. I’ve never been in a building that was that full of positive energy. It was absolutely amazing. It was a celebration of everything that happened during their magical run that season and it was a celebration in anticipation of what was ahead. The team was young, the team was fun, the team was really talented. Everybody in that building knew that the next few years were going to be awesome to watch and I think everybody was reveling in it during that Stanford drubbing.

And things have never been the same. Basketball is now the school’s major sport and with the Supersonics departure for Oklahoma, the Huskies are Seattle’s #1 basketball team. The expectations are Sweet Sixteens or better instead of being euphoric about an 18-10 finish.

That’s why this season was disappointing until they rallied to win the Pac-10 Tournament and then knocked off #6 seed Marquette and #3 New Mexico in the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. And now that’s why I sit here in a dirty jersey, butterflies in my stomach, trying to pass the time away before today’s 4:27 tip time hoping that my Dawgs can tear up some Mountaineers.

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I have a new favorite radio station, though admittedly, there isn’t much competition because I didn’t really have a favorite to begin with.

While I have always liked the idea of Seattle’s non-commercial indie icon KEXP and former Oxford, Ohio’s terrestrial radio now Cincinnati/Austin’s online only WOXY, neither station really satisfies me. KEXP is just too easy listening. They play way too much really quiet, wussie indie music, boring alt-country and ambient electronic music. Despite its revered hipster status here in the Seattle area, it has become a really sleepy, boring radio station. I can listen for a whole hour and not hear one song that I really enjoy and it will probably make me slip into a deep music induced sleep. WOXY isn’t as boring, but they play a lot of music that is less accessible, less polished – but not in a good way. Don’t ask me to explain, I can’t, it just doesn’t work for me.

While searching around for some good kid’s music – the kindie genre is one that I’ve become really interested in and am thinking about doing a radio show/podcast – I found Minnesota Public Radio’s HD and internet channel Wonderground Radio. It’s a station that has a nice little mix of music that is kid friendly - some good adult indie music mixed with kid’s artists. The only problem is that it’s completely automated and seems to repeat quite often. But Wonderground Radio led me to the station that it is an offshoot of, The Current – my new favorite radio station.

The Current is basically the same format as both KEXP and WOXY but what it does really well is keep things pretty upbeat. In direct comparison to KEXP, The Current plays most of the same artists, but where KEXP plays a lot of the softer, slower songs off of an artist’s album, The Current plays the faster, poppier, more radio friendly songs. Now instead of not liking a single song over an hour I’m bopping along to virtually an entire hour of music by practically the same artists. Sure they play some softer, slower tracks, but it’s usually the exception instead of the rule. It’s just so much more of a satisfying and exciting listening experience for me. It’s almost exactly what I’ve been looking for in a radio station for a really long time.

Anyway, you can find MPR’s The Current at 89.3 FM in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, on the web at thecurrent.org or if you have an iPhone, you can listen on the MPR app.

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A couple weeks ago, my work computer went completely tits up because of a virus and I had to call in our building’s IT professional to unbork my computer. While I admit that I had been surfing the internet a little too much, I wasn’t looking at anything more damning than Deadspin or even (gasp) Slate.com. So when the IT lady gave me kind of a stern warning about “certain” websites and that she’d clean it up this one time, I was a little bit confused but didn’t really think too much about it - in fact, I just shrugged and chuckled about it. I just figured she was warning me about Twitter or Facebook.

So when I needed to track a package for work the following week and found that my internet still wasn’t working – I have taken to using my iPhone for any personal surfing needs – I called the IT lady again. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong so she contacted another IT person that wasn’t in our building. She didn’t have his number, so she sent an email from my account to have him call her at my extension. A little while later, I was looking to see if I had sent an another email and ran across her email that she sent. What follows is that email and the series of mortifying emails that followed…

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From: Brandon
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 11:36 AM
To: Jeff
Subject: hey call me it (IT lady)

Hey im at that porn virus computer. Iv done everything but its still there call 1360xxxxxxx


From: Brandon
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 1:12 PM
To: (IT lady)
Subject: FW: hey call me it (IT lady)

(IT lady),

I hope you don’t think I was looking at porn on my computer, that wasn’t the case. Worst website I visited on a regular basis was Twitter or sometimes Deadspin – a sports blog. Mainly it was online radio and newspapers.

-Brandon


From: (IT Lady)
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 1:35 PM
To: Brandon
Subject: RE: hey call me it (IT lady)

Well yeah, actually I did. When I first was cleaning up that virus all it kept doing was popping up this one porn site. I had to actually log off because it keep popping up well hummm lets say pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!. That’s why I first asked you was there anyone else that uses your machine? And when I said, there are “certain” sites that give viruses more than others. And when I talked to you the second time. I said “just so we were clear I would clean it up this time. But I cant do it again” what did you think I was talking about? There was quite of few sites in the history that were quite damaging. Like I said I would clean it that time. If your worried about what I said to Jeff in that email. don’t worry about it. we talked about it and decided that was (if you will) that was 1

(IT Lady)


From: Brandon
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 2:06 PM
To: (IT lady)
Subject: RE: hey call me it (IT lady)

That’s crazy because I definitely never went to any porn sites, swear to god. I know that might be hard to believe considering that you found damaging sites in history and I probably can’t convince you, but you have to take me at my word. I may have a web surfing problem, but I’m not stupid enough to look at porn at work. I was just thinking that I wasn’t supposed to be using Facebook or Twitter or whatever…serious time wasters that management usually is not fond of people using.

Now you have me wondering if anybody else does use my computer. We do have a night crew. Since I have a strike one on me, I’m telling you now that I’m not using my internet for anything but the intranet, UPS.com, Conway Freight, Yellow Freight and maybe a few other totally work related sites. If porn sites end up in my history or I get another porn related virus, I don’t want to be blamed because it wasn’t me.

Totally mortified,
Brandon


From: (IT lady)
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 2:30 PM
To: Brandon
Subject: RE: hey call me it (IT lady)

Do you lock your computer up when you leave? Lock up as in hitting control / alt / delete / lock computer? You remember when I asked you if anyone else uses your computer? Ya know, I thought to my self, WOW he handled him self quite well. I was completely impressed how you just said OK. If fact I was telling some friends of mine, (outside of work) how well you carried your self considering you got caught for watching porn at work.


From: Brandon
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 3:32 PM
To: (IT lady)
Subject: RE: hey call me it (IT lady)

GAH! You must’ve thought I was a sociopath or something. That doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me feel like I came off as CRAZY. If I would’ve got caught watching porn, I think I would’ve just walked out of the building and never come back. Just thinking that you think I was watching porn makes me want to walk out the building and never come back.

Anyway, I almost always log off of my profile or even turn off the computer when I leave, so I don’t know what the deal is. I’ll try locking it down from here on out.

Still totally and completely mortified,
Brandon


From: (IT lady)
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 3:35 PM
To: Brandon
Subject: RE: hey call me it (IT lady)

No no I didn’t mean to make you feel worse. Gezzz I was just saying you handled your self very professional. That all. Its no biggy really. I didn’t tell anyone. Just jeff and he didn’t tell anyone. Its all good.

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Well, thank god it’s “all good”. If I would’ve been fired for looking at porn when I wasn’t actually looking at porn, that would’ve been a hard one to swallow. And though it is “all good”, I have a hard time facing the IT lady that found porn all over my computer and now assumes that I am a guy that just sat back here jerking it all day who then shows no remorse or concern when caught red handed.

On a related note: thank god for the iPhone....

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