THE March Madness Preview

It's that time of the year again folks! Time for the greatest single elimination tournament in the history of our solar system, March Madness!

Yesterday I was watching ESPN when the so called "experts" revealed the bracket and gave their experty opinions on the match ups. It basically turned into a giant "who can kiss Bob Knight's butt the most" contest, with Jay Bilas coming in a close second to Hubert Davis. I can't blame them. When I saw Bob Knight at the Portland Airport a few months ago I felt the presence of something that can only be described as pure evil. I can't even imagine having to sit next to him for an extended period of time. Digger Phelps was the only one who seemed to actually challenge Knight from time to time, which only goes to show that Digger Phelps obviously doesn't value his life very much.

That being said, Bob Knight was the only "expert" who had the testicular fortitude to make some daring picks. After the other guys got done earning their six figure incomes by telling us that a bunch of number one and two seeds would make it to the final four, Knight went out on a limb and chose Pitt to make it to the final game. That's got to feel nice if you're Pitt, except when you realize that Knight is in direct legion with the devil himself. Oh well, Satan likes your chances at least.

But let's just forget about the "experts" why don't we. They're always way too safe, and way too wrong. If your looking for truly insightful, and truly true-y picks, then you've come to the right place. Let's get down to some predictions:

EAST
North Carolina is the obvious choice coming out of the East region. They've only lost only two games all season, despite playing a tough schedule. Unfortunately All-American forward Tyler Hansbrough is the recipient of this year's prestigious "Player-I-Most-Want-To-Punch-In-The-Face" award. Hansbrough plays hard. Out of his mind actually. He reminds me of Adam Morrison last year: hyper-competitive, and partially insane (not to mention unathletic and a future NBA bust). Hansbrough's Tar Heels lose in the 2nd round to Indiana, and we get to watch him cry about it on national television. Washington State comes out of the East.

MIDWEST
Kansas squeaks away with a quintuple overtime win vs. Portland State in the first round, and ends up losing to Vanderbilt in the Elite Eight. Vandy to the Final Four!

SOUTH
Memphis proves just how crappy Conference USA is by losing badly to Michigan State in the Sweet 16. Unfortunately, Drew Neitzel finally comes clean about his Nazi ancestry and current ties to the KKK. Bad karma surrounds the team, they lose to Texas who makes it out of the South.

WEST
There are a couple things I don't like to see on basketball players. Headbands normally look goofy, these things, gelled up hair do's, and really bad facial hair.

When I watch UCLA's Kevin Love play, I'm simply cannot get over the fact that he has a really really ridiculous looking chin-strap looking beardy thing.

Just because you can grow facial hair doesn't mean you should. And Kevin Love definitely
shouldn't. They lose in the 2nd round to BYU, who makes it all the way to the Final Four.

I will give my Final Four predictions later in the Tournament, but just remember: BYU, Texas, Vandy, and Washington State. You heard it hear first folks.

And just to sweeten the deal, make sure to sign up for ESPN's Bracket Challenge, and join my group, State of the Stephen Bracket Challenge. If you win I'll send you your very own State of the Stephen T-Shirt, and several strands of my hair so you can clone me and use me as a slave around the house.

Taking Out the Trash--Harder Than it Seems

There's not really an easy way to explain this, so I'll just get right into it: my roommate doesn't flush his toilet paper. In fact, it doesn't even make its way into the toilet. Instead he carefully folds the soiled paper into neat squares and places them in the waste basket NEXT to the toilet. I've heard that this is a common practice in parts of Mexico, or in certain 3rd world countries where the plumbing is, apparently, only capable of flushing the poo. Last I checked though, Utah is not a 3rd world country. I could be wrong.

Now, the waste basket is just one of those tiny bathroom-sized baskets, which are designed to take in the occasional bathroom refuse, because bathrooms only OCCASIONALLY create refuse. An empty shampoo bottle, floss from that one time last year that you decided to floss, etc. They are not designed to hold massive amounts of poopy and bloody/snotty toilet paper. No problem, you say. Certainly your roommate is kind enough to remove his own fecal matter from the bathroom once the garbage is full, right? WRONG.

Instead, he ties off the bag that is full (he uses the plastic bags they put your groceries in, so thumbs up for recycling), and places it next to the waste basket. Pretty soon one tied-off bag became two, two became three, etc. until there were (get this): FIVE FULL BAGS OF POOPY TOILET PAPER SITTING ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR.

Now, I've always had a thing about doing your part when it comes to roommate living situations. Unfortunately my willingness to "do my part" has often been translated by my roommates to mean, "Stephen is our maid." At least in my current living situation, its like I'm playing the part of Mother to a bunch of adolescent douche bags.

So back to the five bags. I had decided that I was going to put my foot down. I wasn't going to just keep doing the chores that clearly did not apply to me. I was going to wait for him to take them out. But when it got to five, I couldn't stand to have them in the bathroom any more, so I stacked them up outside his bedroom door. Yes, I truly am the master of subtle hints.

Later that day I got home from school and found that the bags were gone! He had taken them out to the trashcan! I secretly felt proud that my roommate had actually DONE SOMETHING that wasn't totally self absorbed and lazy. Later I left to go to the gym and decided to go out the back door, only to find that the five bags had been half-heartedly tossed onto the back porch/back yard, which means my roommate took the bags, went up the stairs, and threw them out the back door. I could understand such laziness if, lets say, the garbage can was 2 miles away and getting there meant walking the whole way. But no, the garbage can is probably 20-30 feet from the back porch. The snow has all melted, and it's really quite a pleasant walk.

This was 2 weeks ago. The five bags of poopy garbage still sit on the back porch, now accompanied by other bags of trash that my other roommates have placed there. And why not? They all know that eventually I'll crack and clean up everything for them.

I hate my roommates.

Side Note: The poopy TP roommate has officially decided to get a dog. Because he's proven to be a real responsible individual, he should definitely be caring for animals. HE CAN'T EVEN CLEAN UP HIS OWN POOP, AND NOW HE THINKS HE CAN CLEAN UP FOR SOMEONE ELSES????

How I Almost Became a Model

I've been looking for a job lately, which is one of my top-5 favorite things to do. There's nothing like a steady flow of rejection to help boost your self esteem. The jobs I'm applying for are crappy student jobs, and I still can't seem to get an interview. Until I saw this ad in the classifieds:

Thinking about being in movies, commercials, modeling or voice over work?

holladay, UT 84117 - Feb 8, 2008

We have booked actors/actresses and extras in major feature films such as High School Musical, Pirates of the Caribbean, Con-Air, Dumb and Dumber, Tears of a King, The World's Fastest Indian, Napolean Dynamite and films for the Sundance Film Festival. We also do commercial print modeling and runway for DKNY, Nordstrom's, Hollister, Abercrombie, Aeropostale, American Eagle, Dillard's, J. Crew, J. Crew kids, Mervyn's, Kmart, etc.... We have cast talent in movies, commercials, or commercial print ads for companies like Disney, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Canon, WCF, DKNY, Campbell's, Nordic Track, Women's Health, Warner Brothers Pictures, Fox, HBO, Redken, Adidas, Paul Mitchell, K-Swiss, Matrix, LDS films, Rocca Wear etc......

Now, I'm not the world's most handsome man, but I figured I might as well send these people an email. I like to do impressions, and maybe they had work that didn't involve having to show my face:

They ended up calling me and setting up an "audition." This was exciting, not because I have any desire to be famous, but because a paycheck would mean I could eat and buy toilet paper again.

So I drove up to Salt Lake for my "audition." When I got there I had to fill out a form with important information, like my chest measurement and weight. As I was filling it out, a guy walks in who looked like a cross between a total douche bag, and some other kind of douche bag. He was probably in his 40's, but was trying desperately to be 20 again. Big clunky rings on every finger, gelled up hair, and a leathery tan. He shouted to me, "Hey what's up Harry Connick Jr.!"

People have been telling me I look like Harry Connick Jr. for several years now, which to me is just like saying, "Hey, you look like a famous ugly person!" I like Harry Connick, he's got a fantastic voice, but just because he's famous doesn't mean I want to look like him.

"Wow, I look like THIS guy? THANK YOU!!"

I looked at him for a second, trying to think who I could compare him to, and said, "You look just like Admiral Ackbar." Two can play at this game, douche bag.

How many complexes does this guy have?

So anyways, this guy ends up being the one who interviews me for me "audition." The reason I keep putting audition in "quotes" is because there was nothing audition-like about it. Basically this guy spoke about himself for over an hour. He is, according to himself, the greatest human being EVER. After about an hour of me watching him stroke his own ego, he finally says, "Well, we are a talent agency, so if you decide you want to go with us it'll be 400 dollars down, and 100 dollars a month." Wait, so I have to pay YOU money? Isn't that the OPPOSITE of a job? I am basically employing HIM to MAYBE find me a job . . . as a Harry Connick Jr. look-a-like?

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm still looking for a job.

Sometimes I wonder . . .

Why some people smell like soup. I keep smelling people on campus who smell like soup and I just can't quite figure out why.

Child Abuse

This might come as a shock to some of you who know my family well . . . but we were abused as children. By our very own parents. No, not sexually. Not even mentally or emotionally.

I'm talking . . . cosmetically.

I first came to this realization the other day as I went through some old family photos and I found this gem:


I know what you're thinking. It's just another picture of a brother and sister, hanging out and having fun, right? WRONG. Look closer.

There's a mullet in that picture.

I scrambled through more photos, hoping to find another one that would either confirm or deny my suspicions. Then I found it, the smoking gun:


This profile view shows that my sister clearly had a mullet (it also shows me trying hard not to laugh at it). Now, it's one thing when an adult, who is old enough to discern right from wrong, goes out and gets him/herself a mullet. But to force one on a child? I'm surprised it didn't lead to other forms of abuse, like taking us to monster truck rallys, or putting crack in our cereal.

Mom, Dad--I love you guys . . . I really do. But you should have known better.

Welcome

As you may or may not know/care, I recently moved into a house. Apparently when I first went to check it out I was suffering from temporary blindness, because as it turns out it’s a huge dump. Student housing is always something of an adventure, but this one definitely takes the cake. Let me take you on a virtual tour:

First let’s start in my bedroom, which is located in the basement. It features handsome pink carpet, and two (you heard me, TWO) desks! Here’s the first one:



The cinder blocks made me stop and scratch my head a bit, but that was before my eyes passed over this beauty:



Now, can someone tell me what exactly is going on here? I have a pretty crazy imagination . . . but I can’t even begin to imagine what happened to this desk. Did they need the other half for fire wood or something? I stood there staring at this thing for about 3 straight hours trying to figure it out, and finally ended up calling the landlord to see where and when I could throw the thing out. We had the following exchange:

Me: So, I have two desks in my room (I should have said one-and-a-half), and uh, one of them looks like it got chopped in half or something and is propped up on some stuff . . . I don’t really need it so, I don’t know if I can just get rid of it or . . . ?

(at this point I’m expecting him to be surprised at the state of his once glorious office desk, or to be upset, SOMETHING)

Landlord: Nooooo, we need to hang on to that. You can put it in storage if you want.

This of course means that my landlord official wins the Cheapest Bastard of 2007 award. You can tell the desk was crappy even when it was brand new. The only way I’d ever insist on keeping a sawed-in-half, propped-up-on-cinder-blocks desk would be if it were made of solid gold. This thing I’m pretty sure is made out of press board.

Coming soon: New house tour part II

Blast from the Past

Here's something I wrote about a year ago, I'm guessing.

Today I flew back from Oregon to Provo, and for some reason a question people keep asking is, “how was your flight?” This seems like an odd question to me, since in my experience virtually all flights are the same. You get on, take off, land, and get off. One time I threw up on a plane, but that’s about as eventful as any of my flights have ever been.

And what do people really EXPECT you to say? “Well, we almost crashed, but the pilot was able to pull us out of that nose dive at the last second. It was a close one!” Do exciting things actually happen on flights? And often enough that it warrants the question, “How was your flight?”

But, just for fun I thought I’d tell you all exactly how my flight was. I was one of the first five people on the plane, so I decided to sit in the front. I was secretly hoping (as I always do) that a cute girl who was further behind me in the line would sit by me. This, by the way, NEVER happens. It has been my strategy all through college. Go into a big auditorium classroom, sit somewhere near the back, with two empty seats on both sides. So far, it’s never worked. I’ve watched an estimated 15,000 cute girls walk right by me and sit somewhere else in such situations. Conversely, I’ve had about 15,000 awkward dudes sit by me in those same scenarios. I always look at them like, "Are you serious? Don't you see what I'm trying to do here?" But they never seem to catch on. Anyways, I’ve learned my lesson, that if I want to sit by a cute girl, I’m the one who’s going to have to sit by HER. I suppose I’m not handsome enough to have the tractor beam affect on women.

Back to the girl on the plane. I was sitting patiently, hoping that my old “get-cute-girl-to-sit-by-me” strategy would work. First, a guy took the isle seat, leaving only the seat between us. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a really cute girl enter the plane. I made sure my jacket and things weren’t obstructing the middle seat, making it a more appealing choice. Then out of nowhere the old, grizzled, decomposing man directly in front of her sat down next to me (and when I say decomposing, I’m not trying to be funny. Seriously, I think he had leprosy). He was approximately 8 feet tall, and his right elbow was digging into my ribs the whole flight. I don’t know what happened to the girl, and in retrospect I’m ok with that. We probably would have engaged in some short, 5 minute small-talk-type dialog, which would have no doubt been followed by approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes of awkward silence/shifting through carry-ons.

The other eventful part of the trip also involved an old man, only this one was slightly less decrepit and much more creepy/molester-y (which I’m pretty sure is not an adjective). He would ask almost every girl who walked by the following question: “ARE YOU A BYU GIRL?” He was semi-yelling, not because it was hard to hear in the plane, but because he’s old, and that’s what old people do. When the girls would say yes, he would say the following: “THERE’S ABOUT (insert large exaggerated number here) BYU GIRLS ON THIS PLANE!” His numbers LITERALLY went from 1000, to 50, to 100, and back to 50 again. What exactly happened to the 950 other BYU girls on the plane during that time span?

He started adding some real zingers like, “THERE ARE ABOUT 50 BYU GIRLS ON THIS PLANE, AND THEY’RE ALL GOOD LOOKIN’.” At one point he turned around in his seat and asked the girls behind him, “ARE YOU ALL BYU GIRLS?” When they said yes, he responded, “LET’S SEE, 4 BYU GIRLS, AND ALL OF ‘EM GOOD LOOKIN’.”

Now I might be overreacting, but I really don’t think 80 year old dudes should be telling college girls how good looking they are, even if it is in a friendly, non-threatening, grandpa kinda way, if for no other reason than it makes ME uncomfortable. Maybe it’s just because an 80 year old man had the balls to tell virtually every girl who got on the plane that she was lookin’ good, while I coward in the corner of the plane next to sasquatch’s grandfather.

After the flight, the guy appeared out of nowhere at the baggage claim and started talking to the three “BYU boys” next to me. This was their dialog:

“YOU FELLAS BYU BOYS?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“THERE WAS ABOUT 50 BYU GIRLS ON THE PLANE, NOT TOO MANY BOYS THOUGH.”
“Why are you talking to us?”

The most interesting part of that experience was seeing who the old man ASSUMED to be BYU boys and girls, because if there were any doubt in his mind, he would ignore them as they walked by. A couple of guys wearing skater hats and sweatshirts, while sporting a couple of “ungodly” piercings walked by, and the old man looked away, quickly returning to his Readers Digest article. A girl wearing a hoodie (with hood ON) who seemed to have a hint of “attitude” walked by and also got the “don’t look the freak in the eye” treatment from the old man.

In case you were wondering, he never asked me if I was a BYU boy. I guess I just don’t fit the mold.