NCAA and other Tidbits

I've had a pretty busy couple of weeks, so I'm going to resort to the cop-out "bullet point" method of blog posting to get people up to speed on the world of Marc.The coolest thing I've done in the last few weeks would have to be going to watch the Boilermakers play in the NCAA tournament. I will state for the record that while basketball is clearly inferior to football, I do enjoy watching college hoops much, much more than the NBA. I follow Purdue basketball more in passing, so I knew they were in the tournament. But it wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that I discovered that Purdue, being a school in Indiana, was in the "Western" division, which was being played in Washington D.C. on Thursday afternoon. I figured that this was too good to miss, so I cut out of work early to go to the game. We got the cheapest (worst) tickets we could find (notice that in the picture we're in the second to last row of the Verizon center- to see our view click here) for about $50, and since they're sold in two-game packs we got to watch Xavier beat Georgia before watching Purdue humiliate Baylor. I would've liked to see the second round game as well, but this time Purdue-Xavier was bundled with Duke-West Virginia, so the cheapest tickets were like $250 each- and I didn't want to pay that much to watch us lose in person when I could just watch it on TV. Now, the place was crawling with scalpers before each game, but we aren't too familiar with the local ticket resale laws and I really didn't want to end up in the slammer. Other notes from the game:

I (of course) like to judge a school by their band. Purdue was fine as always, but the song selection could've been better. Baylor, on the other hand, weren't the best musicians but played a really fun set, including "The Time Warp" from Rocky Horror. I was entertained.

Ramya likes to watch the cheerleaders, and she pointed out that the Georgia cheerleaders were slutty. I though it was funny she mentioned that, because back in college when we met Georgia in the Outback Bowl I was dating a girl on the Purdue dance team, and she said the same thing. She added that it's a common trick to act slutty to cover up poor dancing. See? Learn something new every day. Ramya also wondered if the two Purdue cheerleaders from the Motor City Bowl ever got together.

Finally, after the game we stopped in to the National Portrait Gallery which, in addition to being across the street from the arena, happens to be one of locations Ramya and I hit on our first date. Anyway, the main reason we went in was to see whether or not Stephen Colbert's portrait really was hanging outside of the third floor bathrooms. Turns out yes! And for what it's worth, the presidential portraits exhibit was pretty fun. As was "RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture." Yes, RECOGNIZE is in all caps.

In other news, Ramya and I are pretty hooked on the Guitar Hero. The most recent development is that they finally started selling the Wii guitar separately so that you can buy it without buying a redundant copy of the game. We saw it in Best Buy, and I did the standard "Let's think about it for a little while and if we still want it later we'll come back" (which is what I do for a lot of my purchases), but Ramya was not having it. So now that we each have our own guitars, what's the next step? Personalization, of course!Now, some may think that giving your plastic video game controller a custom paint job is a little too much. To those people I would say "You are clearly just jealous of our awesomeness." I mean, look at these bad boys! Ramya went with a very appropriate pink guitar with a red lightning bolt, while I tried to recreate the Purdue football helmet. I was going to try to put the "P" logo on as well, but when I beheld the simple elegance of the stripe (and the way it incorporates the Wiimote) I decided to leave well enough alone. I'll also mention that for the above picture we did not intentionally dress to match our guitars, which shows how appropriate they really are. If you want some in-process pictures, check the Facebook gallery here.

I've been doing a lot of driving as of late, and I've been making use of a couple of CDs that I finally got to [cough] borrow from Carly: Evita (Madonna/Antonio Banderas version) and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Chicago/Donny Osmond version). I already had the Broadway Joseph, but I just plain like the Chicago arraignments better. In any case, I had forgotten how much I love musicals- I like the way the whole thing tells a story, and there are several reoccurring themes throughout the songs. I told Ramya that I was on a big Andrew Lloyd Weber kick, and she said "Oh good. That's not gay at all."

I just got back from Chicago this afternoon, and I'll tell you what sucks: Advantage Rent a Car. I've never had Advantage before, so I did my homework ahead of time. All the rental cars at O'Hare are off-airport, so I went to the website to make sure I would know how to get to the hotel from their branch (even though the website specifically says the have an "in-terminal location," which they don't). When I retrieved my luggage, I went out to the curb where all the rental car shuttles pick up. After waiting for several minutes without seeing an advantage shuttle, I asked a, I don't know, traffic director guy if this was where the Advantage shuttle picked up. He answered no, I needed to go way the hell over to where the hotel shuttles pick up and get on the "Fast Track" parking shuttle. I did so, and got on the Fast Track bus after confirming that this was how to get to Advantage Car Rental. Turns out "Fast Track" is a third party airport parking place, and Advantage has a rental counter in their dumpy ghetto location. Here's the thing: How in God's name was I supposed to know to do that? Every other car rental place has their own shuttle. But to get to Advantage, you have to take the Fast Track Parking shuttle, which has no Advantage markings on it whatsoever. And does the Fast Track Parking shuttle pick you up at the parking shuttle stop? No- you can board it at the hotel shuttle stop. I'm just really surprised that no one's complained about this yet. I would've said something to the lady at the counter, but she was having a pretty hard time all around. Including, but not limited to, typing in my address. I told her my street name, and she didn't understand. I tried again, no dice. She said "how's that spelled?" I said, like always, "Silver, like the metal." She said "Oh, silver, like the metal... How's that spelled?"

For my final travel note, there were about 7 Navy people attending this meeting, of whom I was the only one who had ever been there before. They asked me what was a good place to stay, and I told them I like to stay at the Residence Inn (I love that dang Residence Inn). Of course when I get there it's totally under construction. So, go me being the experienced guy- send everyone to a torn-up hotel.

Okay, that's it for now. Have great weekend!