Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Heart Of The Big Ten Season

Tonight Joshua and I will take my Dad to see the Golden Gophers play the Indiana Hoosiers. We are looking forward to the game very much.

Both teams are having good seasons, and it should be an excellent game. Williams Arena, old and decrepit, is a wonderful venue for college basketball, one of the best in the nation.

When I was a kid, I always loved going to Williams Arena to see the Golden Gophers. For years, I went with my Dad and both of my brothers to the games. After my older brother went away to college, I went to the games with my Dad and my middle brother. After both of my brothers were in college, I went to the games with my Dad alone.

The first season my Dad and I went to the games by ourselves was the 1996-1997 season, the miraculous season that saw the Golden Gophers win the Big Ten Championship and make their only Final Four appearance in the modern era. That was a thrilling season for my Dad and me, and I shall never forget it. I was sixteen years old at the time, and I lived and breathed Minnesota basketball that season.

The Minnesota program has not enjoyed comparable success since that 1996-1997 season, and I hope that Tubby Smith restores the Gophers to the glory years that occurred, with some frequency, in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s.

We have an additional reason to enjoy tonight’s game. The Indiana coach, Kelvin Sampson, coached the Oklahoma Sooners until two years ago. Sampson was the major coach of Josh’s growing-up years, and Josh looks forward to seeing Sampson again. It should be a fun night out for all of us.

This coming weekend, Josh and I will have a houseguest: one of my former law school classmates and roommates. Taking advantage of the three-day holiday weekend, Paul will be visiting Minnesota for the first time.

On Sunday afternoon, Josh and I will take Paul to Williams Arena to see the Golden Gophers host the Michigan State Spartans. That game, I believe, will prove to be the major event of our weekend.

Josh and I will take Paul around to see the highlights of the Twin Cities during his stay, but I am not sure how much serious exploration we will be able to do, and this is because of the extreme cold.

Paul arrives Friday night. We’ll take him out to dinner on Friday night.

On Saturday, Josh and I will take Paul into downtown Minneapolis and show him the main buildings, and let him decide what attractions he wants to visit that day. On Saturday night, we may go to the movies, since the current offerings at the Guthrie Theater—Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” and Tanya Barfield’s “Blue Door”, which opens tonight (the third theater is currently dark, undergoing rehearsals for Wendy Wasserstein’s final play, scheduled to open next month)—do not appeal to any of us.

On Sunday morning, we will go into downtown Saint Paul and show Paul the main buildings there. On Sunday afternoon, we will go to the Minnesota-Michigan State game, and on Sunday evening we will go over to my parents’ house for dinner. Paul has already met my parents, and he likes them very much, and he will be able to visit the family home in which I grew up.

On Monday, we may end up going to the Mall Of America, just to have something to do. Everyone who visits Minneapolis seems to want to go there, and it is worth exploring for an hour or two when the weather makes outside activity unattractive.

Josh and I will insure Paul has a good visit, no matter what we end up doing—and we have a comprehensive array of exotic and delectable Norwegian eel dishes planned for Paul to eat while he is with us!

4 comments:

  1. Yes, those Norwegian eel dishes are waiting for you.

    Saturday: scrambled eggs with eel for breakfast, eel parmesan for lunch, eel tetrazzini for dinner.

    Sunday: eel eggs benedict for breakfast, eel crocquets for lunch, eel soup and eel cutlets for dinner.

    Monday: eel omelets for breakfast, pickled eel for lunch.

    I bet your mouth is watering.

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  2. Drew, you're missing out by not reading William Fregosi's blog. I know he's a psycho, but it's the best thing on the internet.

    I just read the last couple of weeks. I am wetting my britches.

    He did several of those stupid self-administered surveys. They are totally hysterical, and his answers are moronic, as always. Why do those things appeal to him?

    In response to the question whether he was allergic to anything, he responded that he was allergic to "kitch".

    I died laughing. His whole blog and his whole life is kitsch. He, of everyone in the world, should know how to spell the word.

    He also posted some bizarre pictures of some ridiculous embroidered tee shirts he wears.

    Why doesn't he get some psychiatric help? He's got to know that people are making fun of him, doesn't he? He must not have any normal friends, or know any normal people.

    You really should check him out once in a while. You'd have a ball.

    See you tomorrow!

    Paul

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  3. We have all sorts of tasty eel snacks waiting for you to eat on the drive home from the airport! Hope you're hungry!

    I can't read Fregosi anymore. I read him half a dozen times, and I stopped reading him because I was not enjoying it.

    He's too dumb to be interesting.

    He's also so weird that I always felt that I was entering some unclean, unwholesome psychic black hole.

    He definitely needs to see a shrink. Lizbeth still reads him, and she marvels at him. She says he is "America at its most flesh-crawling".

    See you soon!

    ReplyDelete