My Day Off: Talking Michael Jordan and NCAA Brackets

I have decided to chronicle one of my few days off. It is a magical thing:

8:02 am: Rolled out of bed. Walked aimlessly around the house looking for shadows on the wall. Instead, I found trash all over the downstairs den and every light on. I suspect a crazy person has broken into the house and trashed the den and left behind bottles of lemonade and cracker wrappers. Then I remember that I live with a teenager and I get off the phone with the police.

8:10 am: Today is a work out rest day.

8:11 am: Today is a work out rest day. Did I just think that?

8:15 am: Put a load of laundry into the washing machine. This was done after a search and destroy mission into above mentioned teenagers room looking for jeans. I was lucky and found several pairs that obviously had been worn because they were (a) on the floor and (b) they were inside out. With my luck, however, if I do wash them then that will mean that they don't fit anymore and I just wasted half the day dealing with them. Also considering calling the EPA because the teenager's room should be reclassified as a "major pollutant." Only the EPA now can save the poor wild life in the room from breeding and their offspring ending up with three eyes and two sets of genitals.

8:34 am: Since the NCAA tournament starts tomorrow, I start working on brackets. I turn on the TV to listen to experts make predictions sure to go wrong. I have listened to Vegas insiders, former college basketball players, Dippy, and other degenerate gamblers. All have totally different advice. So much so that my head is about to explode. I have completed a total of 11 brackets so far. Dippy has three. I have no chance at winning, so say my father who has been running smack since I agreed to feed my sports degenerate addiction of filling out silly brackets in the name of competition. It is official I am a complete sports degenerate. I am out of control.

9:35 am: Move laundry from washer into dryer.

9:37 am: Got cat off kitchen counter.

9:38 am: Got cat off kitchen counter.

9:41 am: Got cat off the toilet.

9:43 am: Cat trying to climb the wall chasing light reflected off my watch.

9:44 am: Call doctor's office where I have an afternoon appointment to confirm time. I am on hold for five minutes. I am listening to Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" on the phone while waiting. I find this ridiculously ironic. I put the phone on speaker and dream of when I was 14 when this song came out and how much of a humorless geek I was then. Then I realize that now - nothing has changed. I now become depressed. Good thing I'm going to the doctor, right?

9:56 am: Fill out NCAA Woman's tournament bracket. Insert joke here. I can't help it. Is there one for the NIT? How about the NIT Woman's? I found that I lost my chance at picking the Division II and III tournaments. Damn! But, I could submit picks for the NCAA hockey tournament. Pondering....

9:57 am: Pondering...

10:01 am: Maybe I should read something. Though I am not sure which book to read. Do I pick the one about professional basketball? Or the novel that starts off with a plot line that it is the day after a major nuclear exchange? Or a heady book about about how talent is simply not enough? Or a book about the history of communism? This whole going to the doctor thing makes good sense.

10:11 am: Took work call.

10:17 am: I have decided that the iPod touch is one of the greatest and most dangerous inventions ever. Ever.

10:31 am: Decided to read the book about professional basketball. It is obviously a lighter read than any of the other choices, but more advanced than reading a book entitled: "Lucky Lisa Goes To The Strip Club," which is Patrick Ewing's and Pac-Man Jones' favorite book.

10:38 am: Oh, shit. I just saw a walking meat loaf walk into the kitchen and go to the cat food bowl and start munching away. Oh, wait. It's one of the cats. I really should stop drinking diet orange soda.

10:49 am: Got cat away from trying to drink the diet orange soda. There must be something about this soda. It's a store brand soda which means it was made by migrant workers in a plant in South Carolina and shipped to the store in a beat up '77 Ford pick-up with 786,836 miles on it. So what is the big deal?

10:57 am: Started to listen to music while reading. I'm sure my mix of moody, depressing, and joyful songs will give me the strength to clean cat boxes later. Or maybe I need a few stiff shots of this diet orange soda. I wonder how my bracket is doing?

11:00 am: Listening to Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box." I often wonder what would've happened if Cobain had not tried to eat a shotgun in 1994. Would he have been as revered and romanticized if he was still alive? His death, along with many others, turned him into a saint-like status that was not well deserved. If alive, would he be running around to odd places, balding, smoking bad cigarettes, and playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the airport Holiday Inn in Sacramento? Probably.

11:14 am: Somehow in this mix, Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" is playing, which is an ode to Mike Tyson.

11:15 am: Sorry, I just made that last one up. It's actually an ode to Leon Spinks.

11:25 am: Can someone please explain the fascination that cats have for chewing, licking, eating, and consuming plastic. They can't seem to help it. It's like inhalants for cats or something. What are they getting out of it?

11:47 am: Time to check the laundry in the dryer. In the last twenty minutes I have taken the cat away from plastic six hundred times. I have stared at my BlackBerry three hundred times. I have also contemplated as to why Radiohead has not had a stronger career arc than they have.
I have also drank enough diet orange soda to be high on whatever the migrant workers in South Carolina put in it. Probably cat nip.

12:06 pm: Just found out that the NBA has approved unanimously the sale of the Charlotte Bobcats to Michael Jordan. I can't say enough how this is such a horrible idea. Jordan, in his playing days, was arguably the best player to ever put on a uniform. He changed everything about professional basketball. His suspension...er...retirement to play baseball after a likely gambling scandal should have been the first clue that you don't want this guy as an owner. This guy is so bored that he places bets on everything. He gambles hundreds and thousands at a time on golf, HORSE, flips on trampolines, and who the finalists will be on American Idol. This guy probably has gambled his wives and children away several times. How likely do you think it is that he puts money down on whether the Bobcats beat or cover the spread? There will be a huge gambling scandal involving point shaving of Bobcat games in a few years. I'm willing to bet on that. Jordan, by far, had the worst Hall of Fame speech ever. His speech made Wilt look humble. Jordan has had more waitresses than Wilt and Tiger combined. Who knows how many Bobcat cheerleaders he has harassed. And you want this guy to be an owner? It's bad enough we have Mark Cuban, the Russian billionaire dude, and the Stalinists that run the Atlanta Hawks, but Jordan? This team will be more like the Clippers than the Lakers under his rule by the head of a nine iron. The NBA is going straight into an oblivion that they may not be able to pull out of. It's similar to Julia Roberts starting to swing from a stripper pole and doing movies that you can only see after 1 am on Cinemax. The only way I would support this move is if he moves the team to Las Vegas.

12:28 pm: I still can't get over the Jordan ownership idea. The Bobcats would have been better off being sold to the Jacksons. It just doesn't make any sense. It's sad to see another Charlotte basketball team completely be destroyed - though there isn't much to destroy. Have they made the play-offs? Ever?

12:50 pm: Got primo parking space at the doctor's office. Hope I don't get run over by another bus when I cross the street. That happened last time. Boy, it hurt. But, not as bad as the Bobcats will be hurting once MJ takes over completely. He'll be erecting statues of himself in front of the arena and will re-name the arena: Michael Jordan Arena. He'll have another statue on the main concourse with him putting money down on a black jack table with an airline stewardess on his arm. There will be pictures of him everywhere. And Big Brother TV's everywhere so he can watch everything that is happening so that he can send cryptic e-mails criticizing his players for not putting their cups on properly. Jordan will become the Al "Crypt Keeper" Davis of the NBA. Believe me it will be a disaster. The ball lottery for the lottery picks of the next draft will be hilarious. Whoever he picks he'll break them so badly that they have to go play for another team just to get their game back.

1:30 pm: Took work call.

1:33 pm: Out of the doctor's office. Got my lecture on transcendental meditation and cholesterol levels. Fascinating and deep. Very profound. I'm relatively healthy despite everything. Despite my virtual insanity and hopeless adherence to routine I am well enough to get hit by a bus.

1:44 pm: Let me ask this question. You have a college aged son or daughter. They are doing OK or better in school. He or she tells you that they are going on spring break in Mexico. Do you think that this is a good idea? It sure makes a whole lot of sense to travel with a bunch of friends to a country that has roughly 500 murders daily over a drug war that is obviously a lost cause so they can get loaded everyday and party on the beach. Trying to go from one patio to another patio on the 17th floor of a hotel in Panama City Beach, Florida makes more sense. I might have to pull my son or daughter out of school if they had a plan that involved going to Mexico. If you want Mexico go to any of the 9 million Mexican restaurants there are around the country. Dysentery, drunk college students, and drug wars don't mix well.

2:10 pm: My father keeps sending me e-mails stating that I have no chance at winning the NCAA bracket pool. He has run more smack than Mexican drug cartels through the border. He's probably right, but one has to be able to back up all that smack. Really. Otherwise you're Mike Tyson or any random MMA fighter who has lost more than they have won.

3:15 pm: They have arrested someone in connection to the death of Corey Haim. Somewhere Corey Feldman must be smiling - maybe only a little bit though.

3:17 pm: A baseball manager doing coke. Really? No way. Couldn't have predicted that one.

3:21 pm: More work calls. I give up.