Saturday, August 28, 2004

It's Like A Nightmare, Isn't It? It Just Keeps Getting Worse And Worse, Doesn't It?

I had one of the crappiest mornings of my accounting career yesterday. I drove home in a fury with Zeppelin's "The Wanton Song" playing over and over. I got back to my apartment around noon, pounded a couple of Schlitzes and sat here steaming and fuming away.

Then I proceeded to watch Argentina defeat the US in basketball. By this time, I was so pissed off that my mind was pure black. I can't describe it any other way. It was the only time that the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" has ever made complete and utter sense to me.

I'm not used to dealing with people in my work. I'm generally left alone to do my work, which means I rarely sit in meetings and even rarer is my competence questioned. It's situations like yesterday's that make me daydream about telling my clients that I'll only do my work via email, Web, and phone calls. Then I'd outsource Street Accounting (collecting a healthy franchise fee and ongoing commission, of course) to India with instructions on how to be Bill Tuomala. I kept imaging some Indian dude speaking on the phone, trying to do a North Dakotan accent:

Hello Spunk Studio! How are you today? I will have your cash flow report done by this afternoon and will email it to you then. This winter weather is nothing compared to my days in Grand Forks. That new Westerberg album rules. One of these days I'll swing by with a twelver of Heineken keg cans for you guys. Go Fighting Sioux! Talk to you later!

Anyway ... congratulations to the United States men's basketball team on winning the bronze medal today. A few thoughts:

- I was one of the five people in this country cheering for them. It baffles me that so many Americans take so much glee when our basketball team loses. Jason Whitlock at ESPN.com's Page 2 addresses something that has been creeping me out about the US basketball haters - the borderline racism that could be involved in cheering against this team.

- The US basketball team was blatantly screwed out of a gold medal in 1972, when the Soviet Union team was given three chances to score the winning basket. For this reason alone, Americans should always cheer for the US to win Olympic basketball gold.

- Doug Collins on NBC today stressed that no one is to blame for the poor shooting of the US team. He's right, but c'mon we gotta point fingers! I like the take of Pardon The Interruption's Michael Wilbon - blame Stu Jackson. As Ira Winderman writes in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Instead of building the best team, USA Basketball (a de facto pseudonym for NBA management), settled for the best available players. What it wound up with was a team long on athleticism and short on compatibility.

Think of it as the NFL selecting its version of an Olympic team by ranking its players from best to worst and then selecting those at the top of the list. While a roster of Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick, Peyton Manning, Daunte Culpepper, Tom Brady, Steve McNair, Brett Favre and Trent Green might titillate, who exactly is going tackle, catch passes, block?

Such was the approach taken by the USA Basketball selection committee, a star-gazing group headed by NBA Vice President Stu Jackson that seemingly was blind to the realities of international basketball.


- I shold mock Spain's coach as a crybaby loser because he went after Larry Brown after their quarterfinal loss, and Brown is one of the classiest guys in sports. But I take comfort in the fact that Spain continues to be one of those wannabe basketball powers that has not caught up to the USA in the sport that we invented.

- Speaking of Larry Brown, I hope he also gets to coach the 2008 Olympic team with a squad that is put together Herb Brooks/1980 style. (Sorry to mix my sports comparisions.) Forget selling jerseys, get some shooters on the team, and let the USA take over basketball once again.