Bracketology

March madness always sneaks up on me.  I mean, it shouldn't; the title is pretty clear as to what time of year it will fall.  Yet, every year, I find myself with a bracket listing 64 teams from universities and colleges which, in relationship to basketball, mean nothing to me.  One can use the rankings, but it is widely known that a difference between a #10 rank and a #7 rank may be one loss three months ago.  Thus, rankings are for suckers.  I choose to rely on my conscious, my inherent genius and my love for certain color combinations.  Some techniques that I, and others in my office with similar levels of knowledge about college basketball, employ include:

- Academic levels.  The harder to get into the school, the less likely those nerds can game with the big boys.

- Color schemes.  A good friend of mine refuses to place any team that wears the color orange beyond the top 32 teams.  

-Old School alliances.  If I don't know about either of the schools, it is best to choose the one that would have been in the Union, not the Confederacy.  Boston brackets best not support succession- even 140 years later.

- History.  Michael Jordan went to UNC.  Therefore, by the associative property, UNC must dominate at basketball...right?...

-Jesuits.  They value education and are a liberal haven in the crazy Catholic church.  It is therefore totally reasonable to support the Jezzies in hoops.

It appears that I am already WAY down in the friendly office bracketeering.  Guess my inherent genius is not so finely tuned this year. 

O'verrated

Once upon a time in America, when anti-immigrant xenophobia was not constrained to 'alien' requirements of brownness and/or practitioners of non-Western religions, my great-grandfather refused to walk my great aunt down the aisle at her wedding.  His grievance with her: she was marrying outside of the race.  Rather than sticking with a ruddy-faced Irishman, she was egregiously daring to mate with an Eye-Talian.  All that he, his homeland and its potato famine had stood for was being wiped away in the blink of a marital eye.  It would not serve my great grandfather justice, or my Karma well, to frame him as an angry Irish xenophobe.  Along with building half of the town of Dorchester and leaving a legacy of generosity and ambition that still serves my family well, he left two of the greatest men in this world as his heirs- my father and my grandfather (who, it should be noted, proudly escorted his transgressing sister down the aisle to her life-long love).  

Big Bill, as he was referred to in reverence and fear by my dad and his siblings, came to mind last night as I celebrated my Irish heritage in fine style- drinking Red Wine and eating Chicken Cacciatore at a local Italian restaurant.  There was not a brough in sight as I drizzled olive oil on my ciabatta bread nor was there a Scalley cap to be found as I was escorted to and from my table by a thug-like individual who was so off-the-boat Italian looking that I swear he could be an extra in any Godfather movie.  I'm pretty sure that Big Bill rolled many a time in his grave in his post-mortem awareness of the serenade by an Italian quartet singing That's Amore to his descendant, while only blocks away a drunken Irishman wailed out, Oh Danny Boy.  

The truth is, I've left the Hot Mess that is St. Patrick's Day in Boston well in my past.  I have no energy to deal with excessively drunken individuals nor their green beer and temporary tattoos of shamrocks.  As one of my favorite people says in response to the slogan, 'Every one's Irish on St. Patrick's Day!', I'm Irish everyday.  I don't need to OD on Guinness on March 17th to assert my heritage.  

Italian food is WAY better than Corned Beef and Cabbage anyway.  We should have started incorporating the Eye-talians into our holidays a long time ago.

Hell in a Handbasket

I knew the day would come. The day in which I would finally approach my mounting stack of Economist Magazines and reenter the world of 'whats happening' beyond the 4 corners of State Policy. The result: I walk around a little less confident in the promise of tomorrow. I fear the bottom falling out of every global economy; even in countries I've never even thought about before. In essence, we- as a global community- are seriously screwed.

In good news, it looks like the drug trafficking industry is on the up and up, and that this downturn isn't racist; its color-blind in its attack. Fortune magazine reports that the world's dwindling billionaire population is the hardest hit- which, I suppose, in raw dollars is true. In the very least, I hope that the world has to endure fewer brats to fill the air space on "My Super Sweet 16"- or maybe that they only get ONE new Range Rover for their birthday.

As we plod along, I do wonder when we are going to get to the 'fear itself' part of being afraid and make some serious lifestyle changes. Until then, I'll keep writing to you from my over-priced apartment while noshing on yumminess from Whole Foods while my bank account hovers around danger zone. No big deal.