Mala Fortuna: Stanford Stops the Streak

The jinx lives on.

Shortly after having this thought, I decided to search my blog for previous uses of the word jinx.  Having written about both college basketball and professional tennis, there was no doubt that my deleterious impact upon the success rates of my favored teams and players would be documented here.  I have been more true to my jinx attribute than to any other character trait.

In an aptly titled entry, Blather, I explained the genesis of the curse, as engineered, and then painstakingly nurtured, by Brother-Unit Grader Boob.*  Begun as a common-sensical remedy to my native curse, the jinx method expanded to encompass our mutual academic pursuits, something that would otherwise be inexplicable:

Good morning. It is lovely here: warm, sunny, clear -- you know, when the whites of the sky are opalescent, surrounded by true blue. I am tempted to say "Carolina blue," out of fondness for an alma mater... but as we approach March Madness, I cannot lend support to UNC, or even to little Davidson, despite last year's excitement and the incredible Stephen Curry-- no, I am obliged, academically, to prefer the much deeper blue hue of the Devil. I can't wait for the ACC Tournament, then that inconsequential old NCAA tourney thang... It's my favorite time of year, despite the fact that my brother-unit, the Grader Boob (who owes no allegiance to the Gothic Wonderland), long ago convinced me that I am a bona fide jinx, making a rule that when Duke, or whoever, is in a tight spot -- the fault being me and the bad luck I bring by my proximity to the television set -- I must retreat out of the viewing room and not cross the plane of the doorway. So he would end up munching on Malted Milk Balls, stretched out on his bed, blocking the screen, while I jumped up and down trying to see over him from my position in the hallway. Brother-Units are such fun.


Of course, he is jealous that I planned my academic career by the sporting accomplishments of the various universities I attended. It is a little known fact that admission to graduate programs is contingent upon one's knowledge of the money sports -- basketball and football. I went to every interview in full regalia -- the appropriate jersey, face paint, the giant finger. This and only this can explain my success.

As we promptly noted and celebrated in this space, on Tuesday, December 21, 2010, the UConn Women Huskies broke John Wooden's 88-game streak record for Division I college hoops.  They extended the record to 90 games, an awesome feat, but then ran smack dab into the Stanford Cardinals last night.

I had nothing to do with it.

I swear.

Stanford 71, UConn 59
Stanford Beats UConn to Halt Streak at 90


By JERÉ LONGMAN
Published: December 30, 2010


PALO ALTO, Calif. — The Connecticut Huskies had been undefeated during the Obama administration, untouched by the great recession, undeterred by the fiercest obstruction from any opponent in women’s college basketball.


No more.


Just as top-ranked UConn had feared, ninth-ranked Stanford was too big, too deep and too thorough inside and out on Thursday, defeating the Huskies by 71-59 at sold-out Maples Pavilion and ending Division I college basketball’s longest winning streak at 90 games.


UConn, which won by an average of 33 points during its streak and won all but two games by double figures, did not lead for a single second, falling to its first defeat since it lost to Stanford by 82-73 in the N.C.A.A. semifinals on April 6, 2008.


Just as Notre Dame bookended the U.C.L.A. men’s 88-game winning streak set from 1971 to 1974, so has Stanford bracketed the Huskies’ streak.

* I am pleased to announce that, on January 15, Grader Boob will be flying into the regional Tête-de-Hergéen supersonic transport hub -- a challenging landing on the southwestern slope of The Alp.  The Brother-Unit and I envision a leisurely manoral weekend with Fred, La Bonne et Belle Bianca, and the three extant Marlinspike felines.  G.B. has a longstanding and unrequited love for The Castafiore (and, truth be told, for the cats) -- I don't delude myself into thinking that filial love is behind this sudden need for a mini-vacation.  Anyway, great plans for great fun are in the works, thus far mostly involving food, flannel pyjamas, and U.S. American college basketball (with jinx provisions).

Oh God, Bianca is getting riled-up in anticipation of both Grader Boob's arrival and her chance to cheer on her favorite teams, an activity that includes dressing to the nines (elevensies and fourths) and operatic productions to beat the band.  As Spectator Athletes of the highest non-professional calibre, we take our Viewing Fashions seriously and can only wish that the athletes we visually support would likewise expend some money on appropriate couture.  Like words, it matters.  Do you recall the incalculably noxious impact of Caroline Wozniacki's tennis dress back in September of '09?  I barely survived that Fashion Sentinel Event...

[...] I became somewhat upset earlier in the evening, after watching the Clijsters/Williams match. [Aside: Please note that my customary role as jinx and source of mala fortuna did not come into play; That is, my favored athlete did manage to win, albeit not in a way she, or anyone, liked overly much.]


Actually, I was babbling even before Serena was subjected to that IDIOTIC foot-fault call by The Timid and Conniving LinesWoman. No, the smashing of her racket at the end of the first set didn't set me off -- surprising, I know, given my reaction to Gonzalez yesterday.


No... it was Wozniacki's tennis dress. She is the second woman in the tournament to be a fashion disaster in what can only be described as a Failed Dropped-Waist Contraption. And it was beige. Ecru, if you like. Sand. Café con leche. Whatever.


All that beige really brought out Caroline's pale visage and blond hair.


Yes, I know that the dress is from the new fall/winter Adidas line by Stella McCartney. It certainly does not look bad on Wozniacki, a beautiful girl. But imagine it on your average woman. Imagine it on La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, for instance.


I'm sorry. No, I'm not! It reminds me so much of a schoolgirl's jumper, deliberately ugly, with a band that bisects the wearer at precisely her widest point. Oh, and then let's amplify that impression with... RUFFLES. Quite the philosophical construction -- all business up top, very hip, spare, monosyllabic, c'est-à-dire masculine -- and all fluff down below, very flouncy, excessive, babbling, c'est-à-dire feminine. Oh, the dichotomy. Oh, my. My.


Again, put The Castafiore in it and suddenly even the umpire would be howling "Foul! Foul! Fashion fault!" Alternatively, the tennis audience would cry out, in alarming syncopation, "My eyes! My eyes!"

Oh jeez-louise.  She is really gearing up;  She's deep into her favorite basketball chant-and-step routine, which has a rhythm that Bianca also employs to lend a pleasing cadence to her housework (an equally seasonal event):

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

The Long and the Short of It

Wow. What a difference a day makes!

Isner is out, losing in a fast, straight-sets match to Thiemo de Bakker, during which the American had no aces -- versus the 113 aces served to Mahut on Tuesday... Wednesday... and Thursday.

Today's match, over in 94 minutes, was the shortest men's match thus far in the 2010 Wimbledon tourney.

I'm surprised he was able to move at all.

For my daily whine: why, oh why, must Clijsters be paired against Henin?



Noteworthy: Mauresmo, very happy, it seems, in her retirement, is coaching Michael Llodra... who lost a close 4 set match to Roddick on Wednesday. Now she can chill and have a little beaujolais on some veranda somewhere.

Funny -- after her win at Antwerp, where someone awarded her a nice bottle, she said, "Tout le monde va penser que je suis alcoolique"!

I haven't been very forthcoming about my picks for this year... I am, to be honest, pretty sick, as well as emotionally drained by nursing Sam-I-Am. He will only rarely take food, and then only small bites from my hand. It is uncomfortable for him to lower his head to a bowl -- so my hands are met in offering every half hour -- a dish of water, a plate with small palatable morsels, treats of all kinds. I will spare you the play-by-play, as it is quite simple: He is a dying cat, much loved and well-cared for, and loving and caring, generously, in his turn. We hope he will turn the corner and live months, maybe years longer, but it does not look likely.

Anyway, I will go with my sentimental favorites -- why not? So that'd be Roddick and Henin. I apologize, in advance, to them -- as I have an extensive history as a Sport's Jinx.

RE-POST in honor of THE BIG GAME 2009: in more better real time!

{originally posted during WIMBLEDON, 2009}

10:36-ish am. Federer comes from behind to take the second set -- winning 6 straight points. Roddick clearly choked and gifted him with at least 3 of those points. Grrr. Still, Andy is playing some of the best tennis of his life.

If Federer is true to form, he will now raise the level of play to a height unavailable to the rest of us mortals.

Or not.

Have I ever explained the Brother-Unit Grader Boob's theory that I am one of those mythical creatures now known as a jinx, and therefore should not be allowed physical occupancy in the room where the match/game in question is being televised? The theory involves Malted Milk Balls, the Duke Blue Devils, the Davidson Wildcats, even the Stanford marching band...

The Play refers to a last-second kickoff return during a college football game between the University of California Golden Bears and the Stanford University Cardinal on November 20, 1982. Given the circumstances and rivalry, the wild game that preceded it, the very unusual way in which The Play unfolded, and its lingering aftermath on players and fans, it is recognized as a highly memorable play in college football history and among the most memorable in American sports.

After Stanford had taken a 20-19 lead on a field goal with four seconds left in the game, the Golden Bears used five lateral passes on the ensuing kickoff return to score the winning touchdown and earn a 25-20 victory. Members of the Stanford Band had come onto the field midway through the return, believing that the game was over, which added to the ensuing confusion and folklore. There remains disagreement over the legality of two of the laterals, adding to the passion surrounding the traditional rivalry of the annual "Big Game."

If you've never seen it, you really should. It was hilarious.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Etymology of jinx:
[Q] From Mark Raymond in Australia: What are the origins of the word jinx? It seems such a strange word.

[A] It does look odd, and its origin is in dispute. Explaining why is going to need a moment, since along the way we must take in the Ancient Greeks, the study of birds, witchcraft, nineteenth century vaudeville and the history of baseball.

First, the firm facts. The word jinx, in the sense of a thing or person that brings bad luck, is first recorded as sports slang from the US in the early years of the twentieth century. Most of the early American citations relate to baseball — for example, The Jinx: Stories of the Diamond by Allen Sangree of 1910 and Christy Mathewson’s Pitching at a Pinch of 1912, in which he says: “A jinx is something which brings bad luck to a ball player”. From there it spread out into standard American English and later to other varieties of the language.

Most dictionaries say with varying degrees of conviction that the word derives from the classical Greek word iunx for the bird that we in Britain call the wryneck. It’s a member of the woodpecker family, a species that breeds across Europe and Asia. It has a strange habit of twisting its neck right round when it’s alarmed or when it’s watchfully at rest, hence its English name; it has an odd courtship ritual, in which the male and female perch opposite one another, shaking their heads about, and gaping their mouths to show the pink inside. Such curious behaviour made people think the wryneck was uncanny, and from the time of the Greeks there were superstitions attached to it, with links to witchcraft, divination and magic. Its Greek name passed into Latin and then into English, either as yunx or jynx. So it’s not surprising that dictionary writers often suggest that jinx comes from this bird of superstition.

But there are two big holes in this theory: the wryneck is not a North American bird and the word jynx for it was always a scholarly and uncommon one even in British English. Appropriate though it was, it would be surprising to learn that American sportsmen seized upon it.

Another theory has been put forward by Barry Popik of the American Dialect Society, an indefatigable researcher into the history of the American language, especially of sporting vocabulary. He suggested that it comes instead from a song, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. Following his tip, I delved into its history.

It was a famous vaudeville song, written and sung by William Lingard and first published in 1868. Captain Jinks was an unsuccessful soldier, who was eventually drummed out of the Army. The key verse is this:

The first day I went out to drill
The bugle sound made me quite ill,
At the Balance step my hat it fell,
And that wouldn't do for the Army.
The officers they all did shout,
They all cried out, they all did shout,
The officers they all did shout,
“Oh, that's the curse of the Army”.

This became all the rage, almost immediately spawning another song by Will Hays about the captain’s supposed wife: Mistress Jinks of Madison Square. It grew to be a well-liked square dance tune, and a popular song of soldiers in the American Army in the decades after 1870. In 1901, the young Ethel Barrymore starred at the Garrick Theatre in New York in Clyde Fitch’s melodrama of the 1870s which he called Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines; in 1902 Ernest Crosby, a friend of Mark Twain, wrote a satirical anti-imperialist novel about the Spanish-American War with the title Captain Jinks, Hero.

So, even thirty years after the song originally appeared, it was still sufficiently well known that a playwright and author of the early 1900s could separately refer to it in titles in the expectation that their audiences would understand them. And these works appeared only three or four years before the first recorded use of the word in its sense of curse. To support his theory, Barry Popik has found that many of the early sporting references spell the word jinks.

Despite the authority of the ranks of dictionaries glowering at me from my shelves, I must say Mr Popik’s theory is persuasive. What’s missing, of course, is direct evidence that Captain Jinks, that curse of the army, was the inspiration for the term, or how it came to appear first in sports slang. That we may never discover.

Poor Fernando

I'm not going to blog my way through the U.S. Open the way I tend to with other tourneys.

I'm not.

I'm really not.

It's just that no one in Marlinspike Hall (not even the Feline Four), deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé, will watch tennis with me. College basketball?* You bet. Tennis? No one. That leaves me with but two choices: rapidfire email exchanges with Grader Boob, my darling brother-unit or blogging away my anxious excitement and forcing strangers to live my vicarious angst.

[Truth? Since I lost my mobility, I am often overcome with my many fond memories of spending entire days on the tennis court, and I tend to fall into a big puddle of self-absorbed regret. And don't talk to me about wheelchair tennis. Just don't.]

But I just gotta say: Imagine the difficulty of having to begin play, after two days off, with the score 6-7, 6-6, and in the middle of a tie-breaker! Now imagine you're playing Rafa.

Whew.

I really feel for Fernando Gonzalez -- but I do wish folks wouldn't smash their racquets. And he does it entirely too often. [When did I grow old?]

Okay, one last thing. I hope it isn't the kiss of death, as my rooting tends to jinx the objects of my interest. Don't assign me some anti-American sentiment, but I do hope Kim Clijsters beats Serena.

Okay... bye now!

*Who can forget La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore's signature college b'ball cheer:

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

Blather

Good morning. It is lovely here: warm, sunny, clear -- you know, when the whites of the sky are pearlescent, surrounded by true blue. I am tempted to say "Carolina blue," out of fondness for an alma mater... but as we approach March Madness, I cannot lend support to UNC, or even to little Davidson, despite last year's excitement and the incredible Stephen Curry-- no, I am obliged, academically, to prefer the much deeper blue hue of the Devil. I can't wait for the ACC Tournament, then that inconsequential old NCAA tourney thang... It's my favorite time of year, despite the fact that my brother-unit, the Grader Boob (who owes no allegiance to the Gothic Wonderland), long ago convinced me that I am a bona fide jinx, making a rule that when Duke, or whoever, is in a tight spot -- the fault being me and the bad luck I bring by my proximity to the television set -- I must retreat out of the viewing room and not cross the plane of the doorway. So he would end up munching on Malted Milk Balls, stretched out on his bed, blocking the screen, while I jumped up and down trying to see over him from my position in the hallway. Brother-Units are such fun.

Of course, he is jealous that I planned my academic career by the sporting accomplishments of the various universities I attended. It is a little known fact that admission to graduate programs is contingent upon one's knowledge of the money sports -- basketball and football. I went to every interview in full regalia -- the appropriate jersey, face paint, the giant finger. This and only this can explain my success.

Ar ar ar!

I am abusing my pain medications.

With permission. Although I reckon that that removes the stigma of abuse -- that "with permission."

I called my surgeon's office twice yesterday, which is two times more than I had ever phoned before. He's operated on me four times thus far, and never have I bothered him or his PA or nurse with problems. But the times, they are a changin'.

Fever has caught up with the severity of the pain, and while it may not make much sense, I feel better. Fever gives me a strange energy.

Dr. ShoulderMan's nurse arranged for me to see the PA next Tuesday. That seems like forever.

I think that this almost 10/10 pain on the left side (now a tolerable 8/10, in my uber-medicated state) is the result of a mechanical injury involving the spacer. I just can't fathom how an infection could cause such *sudden* severe pain. Severe pain, sure. But that suddenly? Nah. There is some swelling but no redness. There is pain just from light pressure. The right side -- you know, the one we're set to operate on in a week and a half -- is doing its part to drive me batty, too. It is very warm, though not red, and the infection is clearly gone berserk. Still, the pain on the right is minimal compared to this freakish left side.

100.8. For some unknown reason, 101 is set to be the line in the sand. Pshaw. I am at 100.8 despite tylenol and ibuprofen (alternated) anthere is nothing anyone can do for me short of cutting me open to see and fix what has gone awry. So I should make a phone call to report an increase of two degrees? Harrumph. And pshaw, again.

I am taking the regular dosage of methadone, and am being allowed extra Endocet (which I believe is the same thing as Percocet?), and 800 mg of ibuprofen twice a day. Okay, so I am taking it three times a day -- sue me. The thing that is helping the most, though, but for all the wrong reasons? Tizanidine, 4 mg at a time. It has zoned me out and I have never been more thankful for pharmaceutical stupidity. It allows me to doze and I feel capable of walking to the bathroom. I even managed to make coffee this morning -- but I had to put the machine on the floor because neither arm is willing to go "up" now. These sort of adaptations? I refuse to live this way -- they must FIX me.

Fred is an incredible help and I appreciate him more every day, but also grow more and more embarrassed. And resentful. And jealous. I want to be able to walk (shoot, I would just love to be able to wear shoes), hop in the car, drive away, do stuff, do whatever the hell I want... Very silly, very embarrassing. He is only living his life -- and so much of his life has deteriorated in taking care of me.

Grader Boob sent me some great stuff -- whether it represents Xmas or birthday gifties, I dunno. He wrote that it would be Xmas, but included a homemade birthday card. His cards are masterpieces! Anyway, he sent great music and awesome DVDs.

I've not heard from TW, and will never know what that means.

We have a Perpetual Invitation extended to Grader Boob, and every part of me thrills at the thought of someday seeing TW again -- but I cannot bring myself to make the official invitation. I don't want him to see me like this -- but when do I think I will ever NOT be like this, hmmm? If I wait and wait for schtuff to get better, we may never reunite, and I will have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

It's hard to discern what he wants, as he has trained himself to want little. All the more reason to give him an unencombered opportunity and let him do with it as he likes.

I am such a sucker for animals -- there's a movie on... Eight Below -- a Disney flick based on true events involving sled dogs stranded in Antarctica. There are parts I am sure I won't be able to watch!

I am so thankful for this blog.

What? I am!