It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No, not NFL free agency silly.

In three minutes the best 96 hour period of the year begins...the MADNESS begins. Typically, I attempt to be "working" somewhere with convenient T.V. access every first Thursday of the NCAA tournament. This is generally my own bed or couch, with an article from the scientific literature carefully draped over my legs, so that I can quickly scan the same opening sentence from the abstract during each commercial break and soothe my conscious. By the end of the day, I have a VERY firm understanding of what that sentence means. It's usually something about pick and roll defense or beer, as I recall.

And on the first Friday of March Madness, several of my friends and I have a long-standing tradition of contracting the same strain of flu and missing an entire day of work. It's amazing really. The CDC should really look into it.

Well, since my current job permits me to work at home a good deal of the time, and with the feats (and feets) of snow outside today, and my car's stubborn refusal to work normally, I have been forced against my will to sit at home and watch 8 hours of the greatest sports spectacle there is. You can send sympathy e-cards to the email address to the right.

But the purpose of this post is not to gloat. That's just an unexpected benefit. The real purpose is to inform you of what is to come. Several years ago, someone (I suspect this person was wearing horns, a bifurcated tail, and held a pitchfork -- no, not Pooh dressed up for work (he's a lawyer)) decided it would be a fabulous idea to try and drink a case of beer EACH on the First Friday. It has hence become known as Case Day, which I find less appealing as an event name, because of the lack of alliteration for which I have a disturbing preference for.

This would be the part of the post where I would typically regale you with stories of past Case Days, but sadly, they are fuzzy navel and purple haze-y. Maybe Hops, Chicks, or Pooh can share a few with us. I have a vague recollection of them being oh so slightly less shit-canned those days. However, I WILL relate one basketball-related tale that is somewhat UNrelated here, after I tell you that this year I will be attempting to record First Friday for posterity with my trusty notepad and Fujifilm Finepix 7000. I expect hilarity to ensue.

Unrelated basketball tale
A friend of mine (CL) sent out this email the other day to a bunch of us that went to college together, played basketball together, and engaged in impassioned yet borderline-non-sensical arguments for the sake of arguing together....

"speaking of nostalgia, have you guys seen the new gatorade commercial where
they show the [micheal] jordan over [craig] ehlo but jordan misses the shot? it reminded me of the argument about which was a harder shot, jordan over ehlo or some random
reggie miller 3 that I can't even remember anymore, and then we went down to
west gym and [EF] tried the jordan shot while i tried to block it and [Pooh]
tried the miller shot. and then at the end when it was "proven" that
jordan's shot was easier, [JM] refused to believe it and said "all we proved
here is that [EF] is better than [Pooh]". that still cracks me up. and the
jordan shot was harder, for the record. or at least better."

The Reggie Miller shot, for the record, is the three he hit against the Chicago Bulls in 1998 in Game 4, where he pushes off of Michael Jordan, is moving away from the basket towards the baseline, catches the inbounds pass and drains a three for the win (video here). The Jordan one is the one you've probably seen a million times -- click here for a million plus one). First of all, how reasonable people can argue about which of two shots is "harder" is suspect enough, but the fact that these same "reasonable" people decided to "prove" which one is tougher by actually going to a gym and reenacting them is downright comical. I wish we had video of THAT.

Pray for me.