THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 7

• Women who post pictures of their pets on their online dating profiles. I'm not talking about pictures of the women with their pets -- I'm talking about pictures of the pets all by themselves. Why would I need this information? No man has ever said, "Wow, she sure has a cute kitty. I need to email her right away," or "Jesus, that's one ugly dog. Guess I'll move on to the next profile."
  
  Right now you are saying, "Gosh, Kilgore, I knew you didn't like children, but am I to understand that you don't like animals either?"
  
  Actually, I like animals just fine. It's their owners I can't stand. When I see these photos, I have nightmare visions of myself on a Date Gone Wrong, nodding dumbly over unagi and California rolls while CatFncy1972 tells endless stories about every cute thing Felix has done since 1995. I see myself sitting stiffly on a couch while Buster bounces on my lap, trying to lick my face as Dogg_Lovr squeals, "I think he likes you!"
  
  No thanks. I'm looking to date you, ma'am, not your pets.
  
  
• The final 30 seconds of basketball games occupying 20 minutes of real time. You've seen this before, right? Team A has the ball and leads Team B by three. Team A inbounds the ball and Team B fouls immediately. Now we get to watch somebody take uncontested shots while nine of the world's best athletes stand around and admire each other's tattoos. Team A makes both free throws and now leads by five. Team B calls a timeout, and the TV station goes to commercial. Hey, are you excited yet? We come back from commercial, Team B drives frantically downcourt and chucks up a three-pointer. We'll be charitable and say it goes in. Team B calls another timeout. (Of course they have another timeout. Basketball teams never run out of timeouts.) The TV station goes to commercial. Back from commercial, Team A inbounds, immediate foul, more standing around, Team A up by four, timeout, commerical, boring, boring, BORING. And there's still 19.8 seconds on the clock!
  
  This strategy rarely works, and it introduces tedium at a stage when the game should be most exciting. Compare the end of a basketball game to the end of a baseball game, where the tension grows in the late innings. Or to the end of a hockey game, when the losing team pulls their goalie and six attackers crash the net in the frantic final seconds. Or to the end of a football game, with one team driving to get within field goal range as the head coach struggles to manage the clock.
  
  I don't think anything can be done about this. Likely it's a problem organic to the sport, like intentional walks in baseball or the Detroit Red Wings franchise in hockey. But Chaotic Not Random isn't about solving problems anyway.
  
  
• While we're discussing basketball, can we stop calling the fourth round of the NCAA Tournament the "Elite Eight"? It's obvious what happened here: somebody coined the snappy "Final Four" to describe the semifinal round, and it stuck. Then somebody coined "Sweet Sixteen" to describe the third round, and it stuck because... well, I'm not sure why it stuck, because it's dopey and little-girlish, but at least "Sweet Sixteen" mirrors the alliteration of "Final Four." This left an an uncomfortable void between "Sweet Sixteen" and "Final Four," so somebody came up with the artificial "Elite Eight." Not only does the phrase have awkward rhythm (because the stress in elite falls on the second syllable), but the "e" sound differs in elite and eight, so the phrase lacks the alliteration that make "Final Four" and "Sweet Sixteen" roll off the tongue.
  
  Call it the quarterfinals if you like, or the fourth round, or the round-of-8, or create a new term that establishes assonance between some superlative and "Eight." But let's get rid of "Elite Eight."
  
  
• Grocery carts left in the middle of the parking lot. How lazy are you people, anyway?
  
  
• People who don't catch movie references. My department had a potluck today, and when Blondie posted the sign-up sheet a week ago, I wrote in:

  Kilgore: fava beans and a nice Chianti

  Nobody got it. Oh, all the ladies in my department thought Kilgore had made a major funny, because I had proposed bringing alcohol to an office potluck! Such edgy juxtaposition of concepts! I got lots of comments over the next week along the lines of, "Well, you can leave the fava beans at home, Kilgore, but make sure you bring that Chianti!" Nudge. Wink. I smiled and chuckled while gritting my teeth and swearing to never again cast my pearls before swine.
  
  Finally the Controller, a deeply religious man who has never had a drink in his life, peeked into my cubicle and said, "Hey, Hannibal." Apparently he's not so pious that he avoids serial-killer movies incorporating cannibalism and mutilation.
  
  
• The tagline for ESPN's series of "Nimrods" commercials. I really like these commercials about Watersmeet Township School in Michigan, which nicknamed their sports teams the Nimrods in 1904 and has retained that name until today. The commericals are silly and touching and completely true -- that elderly man in the tool shed is Dale Jenkins (Watersmeet Class of 1940), and he's singing the actual Nimrod fight song.
  
  But the ad's tagline reads, "Without sports, who would cheer for the Nimrods?" Well, ESPN, "Nimrods" is the name of a sports team, so without sports the Nimrods wouldn't exist anyway. Thanks for playing!

+posted by Lawrence @ 3/26/2004 10:11:00 AM