the other night i was talking to a sports-loving friend, and i mentioned the controversy over the expansion of the beloved gallagher-iba arena. he laughed at me and my characterization of oklahoma state as a "basketball school." he also said he had never heard of henry iba. he seemed to think i was mistaking school pride for actual school accomplishments.
a couple of things you should know about my pokes: oklahoma state basketball currently has the nation's longest winning streak. dan wetzel (smartest sports-writer in the universe) writes "The Pokes keep proving they are for real" and "This might be Eddie Sutton's best team in Stillwater since the 1995 Final Four club that put the program back on the map."
a word about gallagher-iba:
Considered one of college basketball's most intimidating places to play, Oklahoma State University's Gallagher-Iba Arena lays claim to more Division I college athletic championship teams than any other collegiate facility in the nation. Constructed in 1938, the 6,381-seat arena was named after the school's legendary wrestling and basketball coaches, Ed Gallagher and Henry Iba, who collectively earned 19 national titles during their storied careers.
and finally:
There are few in basketball circles who don't know about the legendary Henry Iba. As a collegiate coach at Oklahoma A&M and a three-time mentor of our Olympic teams, Iba did more than win national championships and gold medals. He transcended greatness. Mr. Iba's teams were methodical, ball-controlling units that featured weaving patterns and low scoring games. Iba's "swinging gate" defense (a man-to-man with team flow) was applauded by many, and is still effective in today's game. Behind dominating 7-foot center Bob Kurland, Iba's Aggies became the first to win consecutive NCAA titles (1945 and 1946). A&M teams won 14 Midwestern Valley titles, and were largely responsible for generating most of Iba's 767 victories, third best in NCAA Division I history. "Hank" also coached at Maryville College and the University of Colorado. He is the only coach in history to win two Olympic gold medals (1964 in Tokyo; 1968 in Mexico City), and he will also be remembered as the coach of the 1972 Olympic team that lost to the Soviet Union in a controversial ending.
Mr. Iba died while i was in school at oklahoma state, but noone there will ever forget him.
next, i will speak with my friend about whether state is a wrestling school. (you could ask the sooners about that.)
Posted by ash at 12:30 AMthe bloggies nominations are out, and the shrill cries of "not fair, my favorite blog ain't there" are deafening. kudos to the voters for not holding up the same old lame shit as quality blogging. the nominees are pretty damn good. i agree with philo's analysis, for the most part. especially the part where he pointed out that malpractice and brainsluice are two of the best weblogs in the southern hemisphere.
that said, hopefully i will remember to vote this year.
additionally, i want to point to a great singles site that actually seems to make more sense than random potshots like match.com. if you're on the market, check out typetango.com. especially if you are looking for an objectivist-minded date.
another soon-to-be site is at inspirationdating.com. this made me laugh: "A unique way of making first contact: women can flirt, but men must initate email." what's so unique about that? it's only recently that this hasn't been "the rule" out in the real world.
i know, i know. i said i didn't date anymore. you didn't really believe that, did you?
Posted by ash at 03:01 PMgo check out swappingtons'..."the fancy and super-duper book and disc trading www site." and when you sign up, say that "spratlas" sent you some points and start swapping!
ever since my experience with john freyer's allmylifeforsale project, i have been garage sale-ing to get rid of some things. the great old box i bought from john has been in the news a bit lately. a reporter from the philadelphia inquirer wrote about it last week. and then the daily local found out that mtv was filming us down at the palace bowling alley and stopped by for the scoop.
an editorial? wow, i might have to get the box an agent soon.
Posted by ash at 04:01 PMjust stopping in to report that duke is feeling a little defeated this afternoon. bye bye, perfect season. maryland (mike's favorite acc team) handed them their asses today. go terps.
incidentally, welcome duke fans. you will be happy to know that the "Duke Sucks" series brings more traffic to this site than ANY OTHER topic - except for my number one referrer: "OU Sucks". no surprise, OU Sucks more than any other place on the internet.
Posted by ash at 03:55 PMI don't get how OU is supposed to be so great and then unranked (or barely ranked) Oklahoma State keeps beating them at everything. Last basketball season, they told us to "just wait until football season." Then we kicked their asses at that and they said "just wait til basketball season." Now OSU wins bedlam and I bet now we hear "who cares about State anyway, they suck. We only care about the IMPORTANT games." Harder and harder to convince me that we suck and they don't when we keep BEATING them. And if you want to convince us that you don't care about the game, try not posting about the game beforehand with 200 exclamation marks.
ha ha ha. OU Sucks. Over and over again.
p.s. and please, for god's sake, not the lifetime record again. Noone cares what your dad's favorite team could do.
Posted by ash at 12:42 AMi'm off to spend a few days on paradise island. i'm only taking a book and three swimsuits. for once, i won't be checking in with anyone.
matt haughey launched a new site today. ticketstubs.org is a respository for those stories behind the crumpled treasures you keep pinned to the bulletin board, tucked into your wallet, or preserved beneath a clear plastic blotter.
as a serial saver, collector, and teller of tales, i couldn't wait to get in on the action. if you want to know about my new year's eve, you'll have to read it here.
Posted by ash at 08:35 PMin the past few days, i finished reading "you shall know our velocity" by dave eggers. i will talk about that later. the important thing is, that i told someone i was reading it and she rolled her eyes at me. "dave eggers," she said.
--yeah?
--he is so overexposed. that whole mcsweeney's thing is over.
now, i won't go into the numerous ways that this offends me. but i will start by saying that i think it is a completely unecessary thing to say. even if it were all true, it's just mean. for no good reason. but it isn't even true. neither part of that statement means anything. "overexposed" is a completely useless phrase, for if you are an author wishing to sell books, i can't imagine a point where there could be too much exposure to you or your ideas. and as for "mcsweeney's being over," that's obviously not based in any reality, rather simply a malevolent wish on the part of this person, this coolness cop. this person smugly trying to make me feel lame for liking this book i'm reading. but i am not here to defend dave eggers, mcsweeney's, or this book.
because dave eggers already did that, long ago:
"Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off. Thus, in the overcrowded pantheon of alternarock bands, at a certain juncture, it became necessary for a certain brand of person to write off The Flaming Lips, despite the fact that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their music was superb and groundbreaking and real. We could write them off because they shared a few minutes with Jason Priestley and that terrifying Tori Spelling person. Or we could write them off because too many magazines have talked about them. Or because it looked like the bassist was wearing too much gel in his hair.
One less thing to think about. Now, how to kill off the rest of our heroes, to better make room for new ones?"
(For those of you still reading this at yankiwi.com - first of all, stop, and change your link to strangecurrency.com, and secondly click here to find the rest of this entry.)
"We liked Guided by Voices until they let Ric Ocasek produce their latest album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout, having written those mushy Cars songs in the late 80s, and then - gasp! - produced Weezer's album, and of course Weezer's no good, because that Sweater song was on the radio, right, and dorky teenage girls were singing it and we cannot have that and so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided by Voices are bad, even if Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video, and we like Spike Jonze, don't we?
Oh. No. We don't. We don't like him anymore because he's married to Sofia Coppola, and she is not cool. Not cool. So bad in Godfather 3, such nepotism. So let's check off Spike Jonze - leaving room in our brains for… who??
It's exhausting.
The only thing worse than this sort of activity is when people, students and teachers alike, run around college campuses calling each other racists and anti-Semites. It's born of boredom, lassitude. Too cowardly to address problems of substance where such problems actually are, we claw at those close to us. We point to our neighbor, in the khakis and sweater, and cry foul. It's ridiculous. We find enemies among our peers because we know them better, and their proximity and familiarity means we don't have to get off the couch to dismantle them."
from an interview with the harvard advocate in 2000.
i find the last part the most striking. lately people round the round have been talking about hostility and feeling fearful or excluded. i think that to a large extent it is because they have no security that the people they feel closest to will not turn and attack them at the first opportunity. i hear them say they are afraid to speak their honest thoughts and i know it is the fear of censure or retaliation. those who are guilty will protest but their justifications are meaningless to those of us who have been its witness.
i don't believe in wishing because i don't think there is anyone out there who hears wishes. still, i hope that in some near future the true essence of those who mistreat others will be revealed to all, and every person will have the courage to speak without hesitation in a voice that does not falter and is never silenced, with the support of those who stand around them in a more honest kind of friendship. a friendship that can hear criticism, that has integrity, that does not lie, and does not seek to tear down others to boost its own popularity and power.
Posted by ash at 01:41 PM