WWRBD?

Hello world. Meet your leader and savior: Rich Baumann. If you don't know who he is, you will soon. For starters, he puts 10 layers in a seven layer burrito. Mind blowing: yes. Innovating: yes. But it is only the beginning. Learn more about what Rich Baumann has done and what he will soon what he will do for us all here.

Bears v. Salukis

I braved the leftover snow and ice and made the trip Thursday night to Carbondale for the MSU-SIU game.  First, quick thoughts from the game.  Bears played good enough to win.  The missed free throws were absolutely killer.  Cooks played awful.  I was expecting a lot more from him.  It look like he had no passion.  Weems did not play very well either.  He was in foul trouble early and never got in a rhythm offensively.  To his credit, he played with four fouls for a good five or six minutes during the Bears comeback and stifling defense of SIU.

The Good: Wade Knapp and Wil Creekmore played fantastic down low.  SIU did not have an answer for them.  Creekmore hit outside shots and also battled in the post.  Once Knapp got the ball, he always put up a good shot even though it may not have gone down, or was fouled (needs to work on FTs).  Generally, the defense played very well.  SIU's final total of 68 was inflated at the end of the game and not reflective of the quality of defense.  Also, I very pleased to see that MSU actually has a post game.  They just did not throw up three after three and pray that the shots fall.  They ran an offense, stuck with it even when it wasn't working, and had success.  Overall, my first impression of Coach 'Zo and this year's team was a good one.

A final note on the game: the refs were awful.  They called 28 fouls in the first half and 22 in the second half.  My friends and I got there about six minutes into the game and counted at least seven clear travel calls and three close travels that were not called.

SIU Arena:  While it has an intimate feel to it (not a bad seat in the house), it is an old glorified high school gymnasium.  It looks like a sale barn from the outside.  On the inside, there is only three bathrooms that we could find and only two concession stands.  Every seat except the lower bowl seats going the length of the floor are benches.  Capacity is somehow 9400.  There is no way.  The place is a lot smaller than what it looks on TV.  It can't be much bigger than MacDonald Arena.  SIU is in the process of raising money to renovate it and construction cannot start soon enough. 

The only thing I have to complement SIU about is, at halftime, they print out the game stats and distribute them to everyone.  That was very convenient and nice to refer to during the second half.

ESPN Article on Mountain West - MVC Challenge

Apparently, ESPN just found out about the Mountain West - MVC challenge next year.  Bears drew Air Force on December 5, 2009.  Check out the short article here.  No word on TV coverage yet.

St. Louis Breweries

CNN.com had a recent article on St. Louis breweries other than InBev.  The article was not really that good, but I thought I would provide links to all of the local breweries that I know of.  So, enjoy:

InBev

Schlafly

O'Fallon

Alandale

SquareOne

Morgan Street

Bears Conference Season Begins Now...Finally

Ok, the Bears look like a last place team.  I am going to try to put rose colored glasses on for what has happened so far.  They have played what look like the better teams in the conference so far, and played them on the road.  Their young and have been injury plagued.  If they had more experience and knew how to close games, they would have beat Illinois State, Evansville on the road and Bradley.

Facts are stubborn things, though.  Bears are 0-5 in conference.  What they do have going for them is that Wichita State, the next worst team in the MVC, come into Springfield on Wednesday.  This is a must win.  Beat the Shockers on Wednesday, take the momentum into Normal next weekend and beat those frauds, Illinois State.  Come back to Springfield with confidence to win back-to-back against Drake and UNI.  All of the sudden the Bears are 4-5 with the most difficult part of their schedule done.

The path to respectability is there.  Sure, I am overly optimistic, but I believe that the Bears can do this.  Go Coach 'Zo!  Go Bears!

The Office Mid-Season Report

With one-half of the fifth season of The Office done, here are my thoughts:

1.  Best Scene: Oscar and Andy in the Winnipeg bar.  Oscar, drunk, urges Andy to call Angela to find out "who do you think you are?!"  To his surprise Andy actually does.  Also, Andy tries to hook Oscar up with dudes.  Hilarious.  Uncomfortable.  Classic Office.

2.  Best Storyline: Jan and the baby shower.  I am beginning to think that they may have had this episode too soon and could have extended this out a little bit.  Jan has the baby without telling Michael, Michael throws a strange shower for "Ass Tred", Michael figures out that he has no connection to the baby, Jan forbids him from dating Holly, Michael finally gets the balls to stand up to Jan.  Incredibly awkward and great ending.

Runner Up - Angela, Dwight & Andy love triangle.  At first, I wanted Angela and Dwight to get together.  Andy was the clear bad guy.  However, they have humanized him with the Canada trip and the newest Christmas episode.  Ultimately, I think that Angela and Dwight are going to get together, but I am worried about how ugly it will get for Andy.  I cheer for Andy now (crazy what one drunken phone call will do to a guy). 

3.  Worst Storyline: Bringing Ryan back.  I know it was through a temp agency, but who in their right mind would rehire an employee who cooked the books.  They could have saved this mistake because Michael would rehire Ryan if corporate had no knowledge of it.  But it appears that they did since David Wallace came to the Scranton branch and made no mention of it.  On top of it, Ryan is annoying, and not in a good way like most of the other characters.  Finally, unless I missed something, he just disappeared in the last three episodes.

4.  Character I am Getting Tired of: Pam.  Is it just me, or is she more annoying this year?  The sad part about it is that she has hardly been on screen.

5.  Requests:

 

a. Bring back Holly.  Michael finally had something good happen to him, and it was awesome to see their respective awkwardnesses play off of each other.

b. The flashback episode.  As many of you have heard me say this before, the perfect flashback episode would be Jim's first day.  Pam is not annoying.  Jim falls in love with her.  Michael, Dwight and Packer are his fellow salesmen, and Ed Truck is the regional manager.  I think that they could do a half-season worth of episodes in flashback mode.

c. Bring back Karen as Ryan and Jan's replacement at corporate.

d. More Oscar and Andy becoming best friends.

Chick-fil-a

I have not had much to blog about lately, but I feel like you, the reader, deserve something.  So, I decided to write about my new love of Chick-fil-a.

Last week, I was at a friend's wedding in Knoxville, and while waiting for the ceremony to start, his parents bought a chicken nugget platter.  Now, I had Shoney's breakfast bar just two hours earlier (worthy of another post, why not in Missouri any more?!), and I had no desire to eat anything more.  But the aroma of those chicken nuggets were too much for my mind and stomach.  I proceeded to eat twelve nuggets with the variety sauces available, including the Honey Mustard and Polynesia (a little overrated if you ask me) sauces.  I thought that this would lead to disaster at the wedding, but luckily, my stomach of steel, once again, saved the day.  

Ever since then, I have had a craving for Chick-fil-a nuggets that just won't quit.  I have spent hours on their website and figuring out whether a nugget platter would be good for trivia night at one of the local Catholic churches and / or MVC.  But I don't know if I can wait that long.  Help me Je-bus!