Longhorns, Goats, Ponies, and a Man from Iowa

Funny story before I get into the Longhorns' post-season and the Mountain Goats show I saw last night. My buddy Jeremy was in town this weekend from D.C., he works for Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, planning and arranging fundraising events. I call him Josh Lyman. Anyway, we went out Saturday night for dinner and drinks with some friends, and as he gets into the car he says to me, "How'd you like to be Charlie Young tomorrow?" Turns out he wanted to return the rental car early so he and the Senator wouldn't have to sit and wait for the shuttle, which would buy them a little more time in getting ready to leave LA. So, because I'm such a good friend, and because I've never had a United States Senator in my 626, I accepted his proposition.

Nice guy, that Senator Harkin. Seemed thoroughly confused when I told him I drafted him on my Fantasy Congress team, though he was concerned enough to ask who else was on the team and if there was anything he could do to help. I was excited to tell him that so far, he was the first member of my fantasy congress team who's ever been in my car. So far.

Now, on to more pressing issues. Texas has played some of the best (and worst) basketball I've seen over the past week and a half. It seems they can't put 2 halves of great basketball into the same game. In our last regular season game a week ago, we jumped out to an improbable 12 point lead over #3 Kansas at halftime, only to crap the bed and allow 22 points in the first 4 minutes of the second half and lose by 6. Then against Baylor, in our first Big 12 Tournament game, we were ice cold in the first half (even soon-to-be-player-of-the-year Kevin Durant only had 4 points), but overcame a 20 point deficit in the second half to win it, behind Durant's 24 second half points. I guess the Oklahoma State game the next day was somewhat complete, though it wasn't like we didn't try to throw it away once or twice. Luckily for us, we got to meet Kansas again in the conference finals (this time they were #2), and again, we jumped out to an amazing 21 point lead in the first half (KD started the game with our first 13 points, and he had over 20 in the first half, finishing with 37 for the game), but let them right back into it before halftime, and ultimately we just ran out of gas and lost in OT by 4 points. Durant had 0 points in the final minutes of the game, and 0 in OT. Inexcusable.

Anyway, we drew a 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which I think is robbery - there's no way Washington State is better than us from a mediocre Pac-10 conference (not even making the finals), and there's absolutely no way Pittsburgh is better than us coming off of a 30-plus point blowout loss to Georgetown over the weekend. Even Texas A&M got a 3 seed, and we beat them in double OT last week, and they didn't even make the SEMI-finals of the conference tournament, a tournament that I might have mentioned in the last paragraph that we only lost in our 3rd overtime game in our last 5 games. The only silver lining, for me at least, is that if all goes well, we will play USC in the second round, and you know how I love it when my Horns stick it to those Trojans. I'm picking us to win it all. What can I say, I'm a dreamer.

Jeremy (not the one who works for Harkin) and I went to see the Mountain Goats last night at the El Rey. They were awesome. I mean awesome. Neola saw them recently in Portland, and after reading her comments on the show, I was even more excited to see them. We were impressed. I need to get ahold of some of their earlier stuff, b/c they played a lot of it last night and I was a fan of it all. The opening band was this group of 4 girls from Montreal called Pony Up. I think they might have been 14 years old. Nothing on their Wikipedia page to confirm or disconfirm that. Either way, they were young, and sort of a junior version of Sleater-Kinney. They really had the crowd behind them from the get-go, and everybody seemed kind of sad when their set ended. Luckily they all came back out during a Mountain Goats encore to sing backup vocals on a cover of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town." Aside from the dude standing in front of me who kept backing up slowly, like a glacier, until I was at least 2 feet away from where I started, who kept running his hands through his hair, scaring the crap out of me because I was convinced there was stuff falling all over me (this dude was too close), it was a great show and a great experience.

I didn't write down their setlist (sorry, Andy), mainly because I don't know enough of their songs to know what was being played all the time. If you're interested, I can tell you that "Dance Music," "This Year," "Lion's Teeth," and "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" were all played.