Scottie Doesn't Know That He Made My Night

First, to address some juicy comments that were left on my last post: While I am not suspicious at all about two ladies from Arizona who will both be visiting Villanova in the coming weeks leaving me comments five minutes apart from each other, I do have to say thanks but no thanks. I'm sorry, but you don't have to worry. That's because it's not you, it's me.

Now, onto the main point of my post. I'm fairly certain all of you by now have at least seen the ending of the game last night between my Villanova Wildcats and Pitt. In a quick recap for all of you who didn't see the game, Scottie Reynolds, for whom the title of this post was named after, won the East Regional MOP award after he hit a driving layup to win the game. It is safe to say that my reaction was exactly like my boy C-Webb's, only replace REYNOLDS with RONDO. I am almost positive that this is the second greatest Elite 8 Game in the history of the NCAA Tournament. What with the constant lead changes and the almost-buzzer-beater at the end, I could not have asked for a better game with a better outcome.

This game of course resulted because of a 23 point drubbing of the Dukies. As you may already know, I hate Duke (Jon Scheyer and his goofy facial distortions especially). The fact that Villanova not only knocked them out of the tournament, but sent them home crying (and massaging each other?) was icing on the cake for my Thursday night. It is needless to say that I gave Fat Dub, JD Sparks XIV, the infamous Clay Packel, and Ibo DeGrouchy, who are all "Duke fans" a very hard time at school on Friday. It was especially refreshing to get after Ibo, who was just flat out "talking stupid" during the week. By the end of the day Friday, Ian's responses were receding more than Gerald Henderson's hairline.

Villanova's Elite 8 win of course puts them in the Final Four. Their opponent, however, is yet to be decided. It is between Oklahoma or North Carolina. I have been asked many times about who I would rather see them play. This matchup basically comes down to whether I would rather see them play the chillest cucumber in the land, Blake Griffin, or the most oblivous-looking garbage man in the history of sports, Tyler Hansbrough. It pains me to say this, but these two gentlemen are equals on the BA Scale. Blake Griffin achieved his status by straight up posterizing fools, while Tyler Hansbrough got his by jumping off of a frat house. Because of these things, I have no preference on who Villanova plays.

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The Soup Kitchen has had a Facebook fan page for a while now, I have just been too lazy and forgetful to link you to it. You can reach it by going here. My thanks go out to Saumon Oboudiyat for setting it all up for me.

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While I did take a break from sweater vest Thursday to wear my Villanova gear, I did manage to spot Mr. Bob Jesson sporting a sweater with the collar sticking out, which I do count in my sweater vest counter.

Sweater Vest Spottings: 44 (1 Last Thursday)

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Always Serving,

Sobel Soup

Bandleaders, Manleaders, and Sweater Vests- My Trip to the NCAA's

I hope you all appreciated Jack's first guest post. Despite a few heated comments, the majority of the readers loved the post. Don't worry, he will be back. Now as you all know from my last post, I went to the NCAA Tournament in Philadelphia yesterday. I will break down each game for you in this post. Except instead of actually talking about the games, I will tell you everything that you didn't see on the television Thursday.

BYU v. Texas A&M- The first game of the afternoon was certainly an entertaining one. Texas A&M won for a few reasons. First was that BYU did not come to play. Their multiple wives must have all had problems, or maybe their religious leader was escaping persecution by moving to Utah. I'm not really sure. Another reason for their loss may be because of my boy, Jimmer Fredette. I don't personally know any Mormons, but that is a Mormon name if I have ever heard one. It was destiny that he ended up playing at BYU. There is one more reason why BYU lost, and there is no way someone can tell me otherwise. I am of course talking about the game's X-Factor, the Texas A&M manleader. This is purely speculation, but I'm guessing the job of a manleader is just to lift up the cheerleaders so they can do super-cool stunts in the air. This was not the case for A&M. The manleaders were the main part of the show. If you can look in the picture, I'm fairly certain that he is the one standing in the middle. The first thing I learned about this guy was that he loved to point his finger, almost as much as The Wiggles do. I don't think he once stopped pointing his abnormally large fingers at the Texas A&M crowd. He also loved to do a flamboyant dance with his other manleaders. I felt it was a cross somewhere between this and this. It seemed like as soon as this game started, with all of the antics of my favorite manleader, it ended.

UConn v. Chattanooga- This game started out somewhat eventful, what with Chattanooga taking the lead in the early going. The crowd was sensing the first 16-1 upset in the history of the tournament and UConn promptly went on about a 30-0 run, ending all hopes that I had of actually seeing a good game. This led me to partake in a couple of my favorite past times: Sweater Vest Spottings and Big Screen Games. First the Big Screen Games. The Wachovia Center has a rather large scoreboard, underneath of which during the game they ran the telecast on CBS. The TV timeouts were when it got juicy. You see, the NCAA made up a nice little game called MEAN MARBLESC. Now, if you don't have the unscrambling skills of a champ like I do, you would probably have trouble understanding what the game is all about. For those of you that are unscrambling-ly challenged, it means NAME SCRAMBLE. For this game, they would scramble a name of a famous basketball player and put it on the board. The great players, such as myself, did not need that much time to unscramble the names. VIAREN NOHNOSJ, for example, could easily be deciphered as Earvin Johnson. The toughest one probably had to be HISTRICAN TALETNER, which translates to Christian Laettner. Other big screen game favorites included the Who Am I? Puzzle, which gave facts and slowly removed puzzle pieces to reveal who the person indeed was, and the NCAA Tournament Trivia. I was a baller at all of these games except for the "Which NCAA Logo is the Ball Under" Game, which was not completely fair because I was looking for sweater vests at the start of it. This brings me to sweater vest spottings. Apparently I have a big fan of the blog in one Jerome Dyson, who clearly knew that it was Sweater Vest Thursday and came out to support the cause. I guess a lot of other people read the Soup Kitchen as well because, believe it or not, I spotted 41 sweater vests yesterday, including your friend and my favorite and Jerome Dyson, of course. Besides spotting sweater vests and completely out-performing my counterparts in scoreboard games, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Stanley Robinson and his ponytail perform an impressive array of dunks that would have the Texas A&M manleader jump for joy, and probably point a little more.

The time in between sessions left some time for me to sit back and read a Sports Illustrated. I guess you can say that this kept me thoroughly entertained because of the 3-D glasses included with it. Jeff sneakily snapped some pictures of me using the glasses, maybe because he thought it was amusing. I have to say the best picture to look at with the 3-D glasses was the McDonald's one, which pretty much shoved the Big Mac right in my face. This got me thinking of how big a failure I have been at eating Big Macs lately. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "Eating a Big Mac," it is really quite simple. If you are hungry for some healthy conversation with a lady, you go over and talk to a young woman of your choice. It is just like macking on a lady, except it gives the man's associates a chance to give the guy an "Eating the Big Mac" symbol. This is when they place an imaginary Big Mac right up to their mouth and wiggle their fingers, showing that their friend is indeed eating the Big Mac. Eating and digesting the Big Mac is the best option, for it leaves you full and completely satisfied. That is what we at Strath Haven like to call the "Jenna Frost." She is probably the easiest to eat a Big Mac on and serves it to mostly anybody. Now I'm not inferring that this is a bad thing or that she is easy. I'm simply stating that she enjoys a good conversation. She is like the drive-thru. The worst option is what we call "Getting Your Big Mac Spit On" or the "Kerri Ann Raimo." This is also known as getting completely shut down. Kerri Ann is bitter, and unless you bring your A game, she will let you have it. Anyway, I have been largely unsuccessful in my attempts to eat Big Macs lately and will be attempting a rebound soon. It has left me very hungry. As you can see, you can take this metaphor and go too far (Just so you all know, I have never listened to this song before. I just picked it because it is called Go Too Far, and I was looking to link for about the 8,000th time this paragraph)

Villanova v. American- I really have nothing to offer about this game because I was so nervous that Villanova would have actually lost this game. I just have to say my boy, the D.A., Dwayne Anderson (sorry Dwayne, but I had to go there), came up huge. American received an out-of-this-world performance from Garrison Carr, who I grew to hate as the game went on.

UCLA v. VCU- The battle of letters may have been the best game Jeffrey J. and I saw all night. First of all, the game was great (VCU came up short on a buzzer-beater attempt). The real story, however, even more so than the Aggie manleader, was the VCU bandleader. Apparently he goes by the name Ryan Kopacsi, and he is the most BA person I have ever met. He got down and funky all game long and had better stamina with his clap than the Texas A&M manleader did with the finger pointing. His style was what set him apart. He came in wearing a black and yellow cape. He promptly took that off revealing a nice, white button-down shirt. He soon removed that, only wearing a wife beater. He led the VCU pep band well, which if it is not TBDBITL, it is certainly The Grooviest/Funkiest Band in the Land. Yeah, I realize TGFBITL is not as catchy as TBDBITL, but it certainly is close.

Jeffrey J. and I got home at 1:00 in the morning, so that meant it was 13 hours of basketball. Well maybe it was closer to 2 and half hours, with the other 10 and half hours spent noticing obscure things for the blog's sake.

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Sweater Vest Spottings: 43 (41 Last Thursday)

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Always Serving,

Sobel Soup

The Man, The Myth, The Legend- Jeffrey J. Sobel

With the blog reaching new heights, almost all verbal contact I have had with someone has had some mention of "Can you please give me a shout-out in your blog?" (I am talking to you, girls lacrosse team) I suspect this came about because of the Clay Packel shout-out, but one can never be sure. Anyway, all of this whoring for face time on my blog has even trickled down to the one place I never thought I would see it: my own house. After completing the last post about sweater vests (which I will get to later), I told my father, affectionately known as Jeff, about my new post. Keep in mind, it was rather late and I was not expecting him to get that much of a kick out of it (he is getting a little old and needs his shut-eye). He finished reading the blog and went straight upstairs. The next thing I knew he was downstairs again, only with a sweater vest on. I thought it was beyond my father to throw on a sweater vest to get on my blog, but apparently not. This situation was just too good for me not to blog about it. This brings me to letting you all know about your friend and my favorite, Jeffrey J. Sobel.

Jeff has many interesting facets about his life. The first are his trips to the grocery store. Instead of shopping like a normal person would do, he stocks up on maybe five items and brings them all home. This would be fine if he did not get the same five items each and every time. I sware he owns his own a monopoly on Chewy Bars and Barilla pasta. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the luscious taste of S'mores Chewy Bars as much as the next guy, but when your collection of Chewy Bars rivals the Terrific Tower of Tasty Tar, it is time to stop buying them. Maybe he is just being prepared for any type of national emergency that might force our family to survive off only Chewy Bars and the three packs of Poland Spring he bought last.

Jeff also has a somewhat respectable sense of style. After all, it was him who got me hooked on the sweater vests. I'll admit it myself that he does have an excellent selection of them up in his closet. His pathetic choice of shoes almost cancels out the positives of the sweater vest. Jeff owns many a pair of Merrills, which, if you aren't familiar with them, are maybe the ugliest shoes mankind has ever laid an eye on. It puts me to shame that my father actually puts these atrocious objects on his feet. Jeff is known as an American Boy Doll, mostly because I believe my mother fills out his closet for him. I firmly believe that my mother dresses him each and every morning and that he gets his clothes from Ken's wardrobe. Besides the sweater vest, almost everything he wears puts me to shame.

Another thing you will learn about Jeff is that he never smiles. When posing for a picture, he squints his eyes and slightly forces his lips to move, but not enough for it to qualify as a smile. Jeffrey J. does not even smile when he laughs. Instead, he decides to stick his tongue out, bob his head up and down, and make absolutely no noise whatsoever. Also, whenever someone is poking fun at him, Jeff asks "Are you dogging me?" This causes an extra amount of "dogging" for him for the use of that ridiculous word.

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With the NCAA Tournament just around the corner, I would like to proclaim that March Madness has already begun. No, I do not mean Arch Madness, Missouri Valley Conference. I mean the Syracuse-Uconn game in the Big East Tournament's quarterfinal. You would probably have to be living in a cave not to hear about this six overtime game. I'll have all of you know that I stayed up for every last second of it, and that I have no idea why I did such a thing. Each overtime felt like Groundhog Day, each ending with me silently yelling about UConn's inability to win the overtime in which they held the lead the entire time. Finally, at around 1:30, Syracuse allowed me to get some much needed beauty sleep. This game came on the same day that my Villanova Wildcats beat Marquette on a buzzer-beating layup by the D.A., Dwayne Anderson, which I watched with my boy Fat Dub. Let's just say that our reaction rivaled this guy's.

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I have a separate announcement that I would like all of you to know about before it happens. Once I reach my 500th reader (as of now I am at 300), I will let none other than Mr. Jack Eiel on here for a guest post. If you are not familiar with his work, Jack has twice been on Bill Simmons' mailbag, so I'm giving him an opportunity to write for the Soup Kitchen. We'll see how it goes, and maybe he will post again for the 1,500th and the 2,500th reader (if the blog ever gets there). I'm letting you know all of this because the blog could quite possibly go over the 500 mark before my next post, which would mean Jack would be writing, not me.

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The first Sweater Vest Thursday was somewhat of a success, considering the insinuating circumstances in which it was announced under. There were two people, besides Jeffrey J., that I saw wearing them. As promised, a shout-out goes to Bennet Hickok, who I appropriately share my first name with (except for a different spelling).

Sweater Vest Spottings: 2 to date (2 last Thursday)

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Always Serving,

Sobel Soup