50-48 #26: ARKANSAS IS TO MYAGI-LIKE ZENISM AS NORTH CAROLINA IS TO COBRA FREAKING KAI

(Originally published 3/22/08)

50-48 #26: ARKANSAS IS TO MYAGI-LIKE ZENISM AS NORTH CAROLINA IS TO COBRA FREAKING KAI

Here, WATCH THIS.

Did you watch it? Or did you just keep reading, telling yourself that maybe if you had time later you would go back and watch it? Remember your Cyril Connoly: "A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he starts out, has condemned himself to second-rate thoughts, and to second-rate friends." For those of you who didn't watch it, go back up there, click the hyperlink, and watch it. For those of you who already clicked: CLICK AGAIN. But this time, dance around your apartment doing faux karate moves as the song plays. That is the kind of enthusiasm we are going to need if we are to pull the monumental upset tomorrow, knocking off #1 (and vastly overrated) North Carolina.

That is all I am going to say about that. For those of you living under a rock, the Hogs defeated Indiana last night, 86-72. But as much as I would like to wax for paragraphs about Darian's double-double or Sonny's 31 points, as much as I would like to tell you that though Gary Ervin was still Gary Ervin, he managed (with help) to shut down the nation's best point guard, I will not do it. Every time I brag about the basketball team, they immediately let us down. Every time I bitch about them, they somehow manage to pull one out of their asses. And so, instead of giving them the credit they so obviously deserve, I will say this: FUCK HOGBALL! The team is going to absolutely lay an egg against North Carolina. We have no chance. We are doomed. Little chicken! Little chicken! The sky is falling! Tomorrow will be the darkest day in Razorback history since a certain 300-lb bull dyke pressed "send" on her computer. We are all doomed. There is no god. We live in an existential abyss that is cold and meaningless, and sooner than later we will all die alone and naked and afraid. The flickering boxes that surround us and provide the meaning we so need every day—our computers, our radios, our televisions, our newspapers—are all lying to us, have always lied to us. Reality is nothing but a string of words, meaning is entirely constituent to language, and our words—our language—is failing us. Jean Baudrillard's analysis of the semiotics of media culture demonstrated how the grammar of the modern age leads to a simulated reality. Images have been over-represented, he argued, and therefore only refer to other representations. These images become referenced in response to signifiers, and representations that represent representations are not based in reality, thereby creating a false world of nothing but baseless symbols. We are the products of false products. We are all nothing. We are shibboleths. The Razorback basketball team, too, is a shibboleth—a representation of a representation of a representation of the 1994 championship team, lying with its uniforms and candor that it too can give us that kind of meaning and release. It is all a lie. Life is nothing but creative death.

Wow. That paragraph was disturbingly easy to write. I'm going to shake it off by watching that first hyperlink. What? You want to do that, too, but you don't want to scroll all the way back to the top? No problem. CLICK YET AGAIN. Besides, there is no argument I can make here for Arkansas's possible success that the song in that hyperlink can't make for me.

Want to try a different song? How about this new interpretation of Hey Jude? Still not good enough? How about a super karate monkey?

Instead of focusing on our basketball success, allow me a moment to ruminate on our baseball failure. The team isn't very good this year, unfortunately. Even my presence at the LSU game last night couldn't prevent a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the eleventh inning. But the game itself was really fun. (As I mentioned, it ended on a walk-off homerun in the eleventh inning.) My seats were poor, but they were in the same section as the Hog players' families, so there were a few other Razorback fans around. I made the ass of myself that all of you have come to expect, berating blue as well as the LSU fans sitting around me. And since my traveling party last night included a youngster, I didn't even work blue. [There were, of course, some exceptions. I was forced to verbally berate a fraternity brother of one sort or another when he yelled "Who cares?" after I shouted to the crowd the final score of the Indiana-Arkansas game. Lucky enough for me, he was an LSU fan, which makes him a monumental pussy. (The Abercrombie and Fitch shirt was a dead giveaway.)] The game was really fun, and as it was at the basketball game, the LSU fans around me were really nice and laughed at all of my jokes. I'll be back on Sunday morning (which is the reason for the early email this week) to see the Diamond Hogs try to recover.

Wait, you might be asking yourself, why isn't he going to the game today? Good question. Today I have a prior engagement, as the by-god #1 Boston Celtics are rolling into New Orleans to take on the #2 Hornets. I will be attending my first NBA game since the early 1990s with a sold-out crowd in the Crescent City. I assure you all that had these tickets not come my way before the college baseball season, I would be back at Alex Box again today. But this was just too good to pass up. And so the 50-48 sports tour continues. (Before the end of the summer, 50-48 will also have updates from Shea and Yankee Stadiums, Wrigley Field, and, quite possibly, Minute Maid Park in Houston.)

But as I close, remember: tomorrow at around 4:15 the Hogs WILL BE MASSACRED by the Tarheels of North Carolina. There will be blood, as there always is in situations such as these. Like the noted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough will carve us up, eat us, then save the leftovers in the freezer. They will wear coke-bottle glasses. They will eventually be killed in prison, but by that point the Razorbacks will already be dead. WE HAVE NO CHANCE TO WIN. WE ARE DOOMED. WE ARE DYING AND DYING AND DYING.

Hogball is dead. Long live Hogball.

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS

[PS—Remember, I cannot pump you up for the Arkansas game because of the cosmical weather surrounding my entry into these verbal frays. I cannot emphasize this enough: LET JOE ESPOSITO DO IT FOR YOU.]