Meme II: The Revenge

I took a meme from Hannah's blog. The game is to put in the answers to these questions into Google image search and put up the first picture that came up. (I was going to do the first one and the best one, but once I started, many of the first ones were really good. And of course, Blogger is pretty horrible to work with when you have a lot of pictures.)

Place you grew up


Place you live now

Your school

Your work

Favorite food

Favorite drink

Favorite song
(I cheated a little here; since I never really have one favorite song, I just picked the one that had the best picture.)

Favorite smell

Favorite shoes
(That was the first hit for "I hate shoes")

Favorite movie

Favorite color
Favorite game

Favorite animal(For the record, I searched "cat," not "baby.")

Favorite mythological creature
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Reporting Live from Grumpytown

You know what? Forget yesterday's predictions. We're going 2-10. Peace out. Click here to read more . . .

Footbaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll!

Well, it's now officially college football season! (You can tell because Baylor already has a losing record.)

That means it's time for Coach Sherman: Year One!

I am trying not to get my hopes up too far about The Shermanator, especially for his first year. Some people (and by "some people," I mean "idiots on TexAgs") think that anything less than nine wins is unacceptable, or than ten wins shouldn't be a problem. Ten wins?!? The Ags haven't gotten double-digit wins since 1998. Come on, people! First year coach! Ease up on the expectations.

Ergo, I am setting my expectation bar here: six wins. Just six, just get bowl eligible. (We would go to a lame bowl at six wins--I don't think we'd get passed over because Aggies travel well--but the name will never be lamer than the GalleryFurniture.Com Bowl, and at least we won that one.) I think, given this year's relatively forgiving schedule, that we could do better than that, but I refuse to be up in arms if we are not.

The exception, of course, is if in racking up six losses, we look horrible. Despite the saying "a win is a win," I am going to be very disappointed if our wins come from being just-barely-less-horrible than the other team, or if our losses are by monumental margins. Because I am just too familiar with that, thanks to our previous coach.

That's why it's oddly fitting that the Aggies' season opener is against Arkansas State, the same cupcake the "Coach Fran Era" began with. Back in 2003, it was a fairly unimpressive outing. I am anxious to see (well, hear--it's not like this baby is going to be on network TV) if the ShermAggies can do better than a field-goal-heavy 15-point not-really-a-beatdown of Ark State.

After tomorrow's game, it's on to New Mexico at New Mexico and Miami at Kyle (I predict that we may lose one of those two, but as long as it's not flat out embarrassing like last year's Miami at Miami [when Miami turned out to be awful against opponents that we . . . anyone other than us], I think I'll be OK with it), and then Army at Kyle (which, if we lose it or have to win it with "a last-second goal-line stand" AGAIN, will make me very unhappy). So, I'm thinking 3-1 or 4-0 for what I keep trying to remember not to call "preseason." Depending on those performances, we'll see what may be possible in the Big XII.

One note about that Big XII schedule now, though--many football analysts have us losing to Iowa State at Iowa State. Um . . . no? They're . . . the Baylor of the North? You guys are . . . high? But I guess I'll have to eat my words if and only if we are much, much worse than we ought to be.

Special bonus time! Here are three non-Aggie football stories I'll be following:

1) How good is Kansas?

I never totally felt like I knew the answer to this last year. Basically, they had two tough games--Missouri and Virginia Tech--which they split. However, this year they have a real non-conference game (South Florida) instead of all cupcakes, all the time (Mangino's motto! [I'm sorry; Mark Mangino fat jokes are one of those things that you think will get old, but they never do]). They also trade the easiest-possible slate of South games they had last year (Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, and Baylor) for the tougher counterparts to each of those teams (Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech). It will be amazing if they do as well this year as they did last year, but even if they drop two of their games against the South + Missouri, I'll be more convinced that they're legit than last year.

2) Can Texas Tech live up to the hype?

Man, sportswriters are going crazy over Tech this summer. I've seen BCS bowl predictions, and at least one national championship prediction. O . . . K? I mean, I do think Tech will have the best team they've had in recent memory. That being said, they're still in the Big XII South. They have to get past Texas (which they may be able to do this year, sure) and Oklahoma--and I can't think that really, even if I try to put aside my semi-irrational hatred for Texas Tech, that that's really going to happen, last year's head-to-head matchup aside. (Maybe if Bradford gets all concussed again?) Plus, Tech has that pesky tendency to drop games to terrible teams. So my guess on the original question is . . . no, not really.

3) So . . . how about those Badgers?

I do live in Madison, WI, and attend the University of Wisconsin, so I feel like I ought to care about this. And I guess I do. After all, the Badgers are predicted to be the second best team in the Big Televen and are figured to have the best shot in the conference of taking down Ohio State. And yet . . . it's the Big Ten. They play boring, boring football here, that's all I'm saying. Maybe someday the 'sband and I will move back to Big XII or even SEC country. One can hope.

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I Got Memed!

MacKenzie tagged me for a meme:

"List seven songs that you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your Summer of 2008. Post these instructions in your blog, along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what their favorites are this year!"

I'm going to list seven songs, but I'm not going to tag seven people (I don't have seven people to tag. Unless I went facebook with this thing, which I don't particularly feel like doing. I guess I could tag seven people to list their songs in a comment, but I'm not sure that seven people comment here on anything like a regular basis. Anyway. Songs!)

Songs 1-3.
I'm pretty sure I watched every episode of Scrubs that exists this summer. Seriously, I went on a kick for at least a month, and it bordered on the unhealthy. So several of my songs are Scrubs related.

"Guy Love"
This one is actually from Scrubs: The Musical! Donald Faison is really a pretty good singer (Zach Braff is OK). Also, it's hilarious. My favorite lines are "We're closer than the average man and wife / That's why our matching bracelets say Turk and JD!"


"Hey Julie" by Fountains of Wayne
This song was the background for a montage on Scrubs about JD being happy with his girlfriend Julie. I'm certain they chose the name for the character just for the song because of the song, since they had already had a Julie (Heather Locklear in Season 2. . . . I watched a lot of Scrubs, people.) The song was so catchy that I downloaded it, and if the meme was the one song that defines your summer because you can't stop listening to it, this would be the only song on the list.


"Closer" by Joshua Radin
This is another song that played in the background on Scrubs that I liked and downloaded. It's pretty.
("embedding disabled by request," so here's a link. The song doesn't start til about the 1:00 mark anyway.)

4-5. Wedding!

"I Will" by the Beatles
This is "our song" so we danced to it for our first dance. Yay!


"Canon in D" by Pachelbel
This was our processional, because it's pretty. (I chose the "fantastic version" instead of the "very nice" version. You're welcome.)


6-7. Late spring holdovers
These are songs that I actually got really into before summer proper, but I haven't been listening to music as much since I stopped riding the bus to campus (with my iPod) every weekday.

"Roses" by Outkast
I don't know why I listened to this so much. (The song as it is on the album doesn't start until about 1:00. I really like the piano leading into the main part of the song.)
Link!

"Tears Dry on Their Own" by Amy Winehouse
It's yet another Amy Winehouse song about her being the Other Woman and she's a mess and she looks like a mess in the video, etc. But this is a great song. I plain old love it. I really like how she uses the sample from "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" underneath the entire song and makes something entirely different with it.
WARNING! Strong language.
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