Thursday, February 10, 2005

New addition to the Teague family:

Kessler Silas Teague

Date: 2/9/2005 Time: 4:58pm

Weight: 8 lbs 14 oz

Length: 21 inches

Russell is a co-worker and good friend who I don't talk to nearly enough anymore since changing assignments last fall. This would seem to disprove the thinking that too much time riding a bicycle negatively affects fertility in men.

Many wondrous things will you see, young Padawan. But always you must guard against the dark side of the Force!  -- Tony-Bob Kenobi

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

Everybody had their favorite period of Tar Heel basketball and their favorite players. Older guys will talk about Larry Miller and Charlie Scott, everybody talks about Phil Ford and Michael Jordan and James Worthy, but somewhere in the middle there THE GUY when I started school at UNC seems to go missing. When Dick Vitale talks about the history of UNC basketball tonight he may talk about Antawn Jamison or Walter Davis, but he probably won't mention my man Mike O'Koren. Everyone remembers The Loss to Marquette in the '77 NCAA finals (the one game I can remember that Dean Smith arguably got outcoached) but I remember the ACC Tournament of that year with John Kuester leading a team of mostly freshmen to the ACC championship with Tommy LaGarde, Phil Ford and Walter Davis sidelined by injuries. O'Koren scored 21 points in the final against Virginia and hit 31 against the Runnin' Rebels in the Final Four to get UNC into that game against Marquette. He then went on to be named first-team All-American his last three years (despite only being named to the All-ACC 2nd team as a junior). He's in the top 20 all-time at UNC in scoring, rebounding, assists and steals - amazingly well-rounded. I don't know why he doesn't get more attention, unless it's that UNC didn't fare too well the three years after that '77 Final Four and that he was sandwiched in between the Ford/Davis era and the Jordan/Worthy/Perkins era. My favorite quote from a Carolina basketball player may have come from O'Koren, who was noted for being an indifferent student. When informed that Clemson quarterback and Academic All-American Steve Fuller had never gotten a B, Mike's response was "Neither have I". Classic!

I gave a little thought to this whole UNC-Dook rivalry thing and I have to admit that while I was in school (same four years as Jimmy Black), they were not the team to beat. NC State and Virginia were the teams that I really remember getting up for - with Bill Foster leaving Dook with a very empty cupboard, it wasn't until K's class with Alarie, Bilas and Dawkins that they were really worth considering. While previous classes had Dook classics like the 8-points-in-17-seconds game and future classes had Matt Doherty's shot in the Senior game in '84 and the 102-100 OT game in '95 and the blood-streaming-down-Montross'-face win in '92, the non-tournament game I remember most from my school days was Dudley Bradley's steal and dunk at the buzzer to beat State at Reynolds in '79. That was before all the games were televised so every radio on campus was tuned to Woody Durham and you could hear the dorm area of North Campus explode - Mangum Dorm literally shook. Most of the rest of the games I remember most vividly (other than the NCAA tournament games) were against UVa - Jeff Wolf and Chick Yonaker schooling a freshmen Ralph Sampson in Carmichael, Al Wood's 39 points against them in the '81 NCAA Final Four, the ACC Tournament final in 1982 when the 'Hoos wouldn't come out and play against the Four Corners, almost single-handedly bringing in the shot clock era. I'm not old enough to remember the early 60's Dook teams that made 3 out of 4 Final Fours and I actually rooted for the '78 team with Gminski and Spanarkel against Kentucky in the finals.

It wasn't until the arrival of Weasel Boy on the bench about halfway through my college days that I really developed my true Dook-hating passion. My favorite Dook-Carolina moment is actually an odd one - it was the 1991 game in the Dean Dome when King Rice so confused Bobby Hurley that Hurley ended up with something like 11 turnovers against 1 assist and was in tears on the sideline by the end of the game. Money can't buy the kind of joy I felt in seeing that overrated little snot get taken to the woodshed by a guy that most people consider one of the least-talented starting guards we've had. The game tonight will be tough, it will be close and certainly we may not win, but at least we're back to where we CAN win and that's a good place to be.

Go Heels!!

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Found out Saturday that Chapel Hill Comics, formerly known as Second Foundation, is moving to new digs down on West Franklin Street this spring. They've been in the basement of the NCNB NationsBank Bank of America Plaza at least since my friend Kevin brought me down there around 1979 or 1980 and I bought my first Jack Chalker novel at the suggestion of the then owner (Larry Shapiro, maybe?). I bought most of my science fiction and fantasy from there for many, many years. However, I didn't get into comics as an adult until I was in a class at the IBM training facility in Crystal City, Virginia in 1985 and wandered into Geppi's Comics in the Crystal City Underground and bought the two that got me started - Uncanny X-Men #194 and Flaming Carrot #7. I continued to buy a combination of Marvel and independent comics (never cared for DC that much) - now it's 5,000 or so comics later...

Speaking of Flaming Carrot, Bob Burden has just published a new issue - the first in many years. It's numbered both #1 (for the new publisher) and #34 (for continuity with the original series) and marks a return to the more absurdist early style. Great stuff and it looks like Bob's got a couple more titles on the way! The other good news, particularly if you like good girl art (and who doesn't?) is that Frank Cho's mini-series of Shanna the She-Devil is finally out. If you're a fan of Cho's Liberty Meadows, you'll understand when I say that Shanna's a little more Jen than Brandy.

Posted by Tony @ 5:45:00 pm |