Where I Be

So, it may not have been noticed, but I've been...lax in posting recently. Mostly that's because I've been lax about pretty much everything. You see, I'm on extended vacation, my clerking job having ended around Labor Day and my new, corporate-whore, employment not beginning til October. So aside from my trip to the homeland of Monday Night Football Free Beer (Sally's in Dinkytown Minneapolis. Try it...) I've been doing a whole lot of nothing. And in the words of Peter Gibbons, it's everything I thought it could be.

Though we'll be back with our regularly scheduled book-blogging, plus some commentary on the nascent fourth season of The Wire, this fall's crop of new shows (Studio 60 and Heroes are the two I find most intrigueing), and well whatever else I feel like.

Five

I don't want to get involved with all the hullaballoo today. I'm weary just from reading people's "perspectives." But (via Andrew Sullivan), I wanted to share my one salient 'positve' memmory from the day:



Since this, routine performances of our anthem before sporting events have seemed vaguely obscene to me.

There's Basketball Going On?

As demanded (in comments) by an angry Floridian (cue Jessop: is there another kind?), I am required to comment on the "embarassment" of USA Basketball losing to Greece. I scare quote "embarassment" because I don't think it is - we took a good team of most of our best players, who played hard and decently well together. We played a below-average (bad defense, 9-28 from 3pt, 20-34 from the line), but not abysmal game. We got beat. It happens, the 'better team' sometimes loses. Alternatively, sometimes, the better players don't make a better team, especially when you take into account:

[t]he fact of the matter is that the Greeks play with a continuity and intelligence that takes literally years for a team to develop, and that they had better fundamentals. And it was just proven, beyond any doubt, that you can’t put an all-star team together and make up for that difference, no matter how talented those all-stars are, in three or four weeks. You just can’t.

As great as the '92 Dream Team was, I'm glad that we can't just expect to roll over everyone anymore, it was like Gonzaga winning the West Coast Conference. Who cares? Call me when you show something at the next level.

And now we have the chance at redemption in two years, which is a far more satisfying theme than simply meeting the expectations of dominance. Am I happy we lost? Not really, but it's not embarassing or the end of basketball as we know it. Competition is good - now we have to actually compete. I say bring it on.

Alternatively, try this for a slightly scadenfreuden-laden take. (Warning, soccer reference at yonder link...)