Villanova vs Pittsburgh - A Classic

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Last night I had the opportunity to enjoy one of the most intensely exciting college basketball games of all time. East region top-seed Pittsburgh and three-seed Villanova squared off in Boston for a berth in the 2009 NCAA® Final Four.

I've seen thousands of games in my lifetime and this is without question one of the best ever. Being from western Pennsylvania and having chosen Pitt as one of the final teams in my bracket, I was cheering on the Panthers. From that perspective, unfortunately, the last second heroics of 'Nova's Scottie Reynolds sent the Panthers home on the short end of a 78-67 score.

It is one of those games about which you'll hear the cliche, "It's too bad somebody had to lose." That, however, is truly the case here. I have seldom seen both teams in any contest play with such intensity and with such abandon. Bodies soared through the air, crashed to the floor, collided with each other. The pace of the game was exhausting just to watch. Neither team left anything on the court.

I want to thank all those players, coaches, and officials for staging a contest that will long be remembered by those of us lucky enough to have seen it.

Oh, 'Nova you didn't! This was an ending for the ages
By Mike Freeman, CBSSports.com National Columnist

Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer is best known for the funny, satirical songs he wrote and performed in the 1950s and 60s. He was a student of mathematics at Harvard (He earned his BA in 1947 at the age of 18.) where he began writing humorous songs to entertain his friends. His songs were often parodies of popular songs such as in "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

It's rumored he invented the J-ello shot during his time in the Army working at the NSA in the mid-1950s. Lehrer taught his last math class at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2001.

Link to my YouTube Tom Lehrer playlist

No, I Really Don't Want to Buy Your Product

This past weekend, I spent far too much time watching the first two rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. I love it, though, and look forward to the big dance from the first tip of the season.

One really troublesome consequence of watching all this hoop action is that I tend to see the same commercials over and over. Some are good and I don't mind, the Pacific Life "whales" ad, for example. Unfortunately, many are annoying and that is only exacerbated through repetition.

Here are some of those I find most irksome ...

• the Chevy truck "man step" ad with Howie Long
• the Fidelity "green line" ads
• the Charles Schwab ads which are posterized
• any Lexus ad
• the Sonic "basketball injury" ad
• the Enterprise "grandma" ad
• the Burger King breakfast shots ad
  

I suppose irritating potential customers is a sound marketing strategy during tough economic times. What do I know?

It's Duck Season! It's Wabbit Season!

Another sign of spring in the neighborhood!

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Spring is on Its Way

I snapped these outside my window this morning. The little guy wouldn't cooperate and look in my direction ...

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I saw on the news this morning that AIG was insisting they still needed to pay their executive bonuses for a variety of reasons. One was that the bonuses were parts of previously negotiated contracts. If they were not paid, they might be sued and the legal expenses would exceed the bonus amounts. I can sort of give them that.

But, another was that they might lose these executives to competitors if the bonuses were not honored. I suppose it would be tragic to lose the executives responsible for guiding your firm to financial catastrophe to your competition. To use a sports analogy, you would really hate to lose the coach who led your team to a 2-28 record to another team in your conference.

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Spring Fever Stimulus

Honda Rube Goldberg-esque TV Ad

It is my understanding that there are no computer graphics or digital tricks in this Honda TV ad. Everything that you see happened in real time exactly as you see it.

Reportedly, the recording required 606 takes, and in the first 605 there always was something, usually of minor importance, that didn't work. Itwas necessary for the production team to install the set-up time after time. The recording cost $6 million and took 3 months to finish, including the engineering design of the sequence.


BTW, the voice over at the end is Garrison Keillor of NPR's Prarie Home Companion.