3/20/05: Pittsnogle Marches On

Let's face it, no matter how severely these upsets have damaged your bracket, there's something altogether right with the cosmos when a guy named Pittsnogle lives to play another day. My strategy for enjoying the tournament is simple: I have only consulted my pool about once a day, and when I do I only look at it for about ten seconds. Long enough to know I lost Wake Forest in the Final Four, but who cares? These upsets are so much fun I don't mind. Here's to UVM and WVU and Bucknell and UW-M and all the other teams who pulled off the big shockers. A lot of these higher seeds played way too carelessly and arrogantly until it was too late. They played like they assumed the lower seeds would eventually crumble before their might, and when that didn't happen, they panicked. And the lesser seeds just got more and more confident as the games went on.  It was beautiful.

Pittsnogle's boys really impressed me tonight. Even if Pittsnogle himself was on the bench for long stretches of their comeback, he managed to make his presence felt with a Nogleriffic three pointer in the second OT. I am so into the name Pittsnogle that I suggest we submit it to urbandictionary.com with a nice definition.  Help me out here.  I've got a few possibilities:

Pittsnogle: a particularly regrettable one night stand.

Pittsnogle: the upset that can result when a higher-seeded team comes out way overconfident and fails to take its less heralded opponent seriously.

Pittsnogle: the mass of underarm hairs that gather on the top of the deodorant stick.

Pittsnogle: a desperate, poorly planned gambit that almost works, but doesn't.

Pittsnogle: the standard post-coital embrace position.

Pittsnogle: the dilemma faced when you have two un-cancelable events planned for the same day and time.

Pittsnogle: baseball: the back-and-forth that ensues when a baserunner is caught in between bases (see hotbox).

Please add your own, and then we'll submit the best one.

***

It's been a little over a month, and the bloom is starting to slowly come off the rose as far as Stuytown is concerned.  Don't get me wrong: I absolutely LOVE living here. But it's not quite the paradise that it first seemed.  And they're not really "luxury" apartments, as they're advertised to be. For instance, when we were first shown the apartment, the broker lady made a point to mention the 'bike room' downstairs. There were dozens of bikes locked to pipes down there, and it seemed like a real bonus to people like us, who own two bikes and would love to store them someplace outside of our apartment.  Then, after we moved in, we went through the required step of getting little ID stickers for our bikes from the security office. The head security lady said, "If I were you, I wouldn't put your bike down there, unless it's a real piece of junk."

I said, "Why, will it get stolen?"

"Yeah, we've had some real problems down there," she said.  "And I live in the same building as you.  I think you should just keep it in your apartment.  That's what I tell everybody."

I should have asked, "Are you addressing these 'problems' or have you just accepted that any decent bike locked securely to a pipe in the bike room will get stolen?  If so, that's not much of a 'bike room', is it?"  But I said nothing. 

There is also an overt resentment towards new residents on the part of the people who have been living here for years. Sure, we represent the yuppie takeover, but I swear I'm a decent fellow.  And I'm probably paying three times the rent as the old timers who've got grandfathered rent control. As Joe M. pointed out, our high rents our largely subsidizing the much-needed improvements to the project, improvements which the old-timers are then free to enjoy.  But I guess we're the enemy nonetheless.  The only entity hated more than the yuppie armada is the management company itself. Several residents have pulled me aside in the elevator and in the laundry room (shitty laundry room, machines constantly out of service) to volunteer their opinions about the management company's cheap and unscrupulous ways. Tonight a guy used the term "bloodthirsty" to describe them.

There is a simmering resentment within these red brick towers, but there is a lot of happiness as well. Some nice people in the building. I need to make sure I stay happy and thankful for how pleasant it is down here.

Although I saw my first Stuytown Rat the other night. Yuck.  I had somehow deluded myself into believing that the squirrels were running things on the rodent level here in Stuytown.  Like they had just told the rats to get lost if they knew what was good for 'em, and the rats backed off.  Nope. I guess the squirrels own the day, and the rats come out to play once the sun goes down. I don't like rats so much.

Speaking of squirrels, another childhood myth was exploded today. When I was a kid, I remember thinking it was really cool that squirrels buried their nuts rather than eating them right away.  My pop said, "Yeah, they store them there for the days when there's no food anywhere.  And the amazing thing is, each squirrel remembers where he buried each and every one of his nuts, so he can go back and get them later."  I thought it was one of those insane animal talents that nobody could ever figure out.  Then today I saw some squirrels digging for nuts in the dirt.  I watched them for about two minutes.  And I quickly realized, these squirrels have no fucking idea where all the nuts are.  They just dig up entire patches of dirt, desperately seeking a nut, be it theirs or somebody else's.  They eventually find one, and then they run off to bury it someplace else. Someplace they'll forget about within 45 seconds or so. Very stupid animals. But much fluffier than rats.

Happy Birfday, wife o' mine.