A Flock Of Eureka!

"He once said to me that he basically likes to solve problems – and taxes and girls basketball gave him a lot of problems to solve."

- Director Ward Serrill, speaking about Roosevelt High School [in Seattle] girls hoop coach [and tax professor] Bill Resler - one of the subjects of his documentary The Heart of the Game.

"We have never retired the blue books of our greatest scholars, why would we retire the jersey of a gridder?"

- Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith in a debate over whether to retire the football jersey of a former Harvard player.

"It's easier to remember a dancing bear than a multi-syllabic Italian last name."

- Don Sebastiani, the proprietor of vintner Don Sebastiani & Sons, explaining their reasoning behind their wine's loopy labels such as Smoking Loon, Used Automobile Parts, Marilyn Merlot and Screw Kappa Nappa.

As was expected, nog season has officially arrived in the Lounge and proven to be a thorough distraction to the clientele. Just the mere mention of the words "vat" and "nog" make the Lounge clientele go all flippy-floppy. But the Lounge was only able to get a faint whiff of nog before being carted off to visit Disneyland where the Lounge was engaged in a high-powered meeting with The Mouse to determine what should be done about the Ducks. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depends on your perspective – the Lounge was temporarily detained at the border whilst deciding appropriate actions to be taken with giant candy corns. Once that dilemma was solved [they should be eaten], we could move on to more pressing concerns in the "That Can Be Changed Department" - like getting all the Disney checks that go to Dan Fouts to have Donald Duck, since he has previously mentioned that only the Mouse is on the ABC Sports [and former Quack QB] broadcaster's checks. But what really needs to be changed is the television viewing habits of everybody over the age of 18. Look people, we know there is something oddly entrancing about Desperate Housewives, House and CSI-Make Up A Place in a pre-frontal lobotomy sort of way, but what everybody should really be watching more of is Mr. Meaty. Why? Because the kids watch it and if anybody knows about fun – it's kids. Mr. Meaty is about a pair of puppets [meat puppets – if only the band could have survived long enough to provide a toxic soundtrack attacking corporate 'Merica…sigh, not to be] who work at the fast food restaurant [you know, THE fast food restaurant – is there really a big gulf of difference between any of 'em?] at the mall. The Lounge knows what you are thinking – how did something this funny slip right under my nostrils? I've lived in this country, like, forever and must have eaten a ton of peaches and never heard of this show - well, that is your problem right there, Chester! This program was created in Canada. Has the Lounge mentioned we love Canadians? Now, Mr. Meaty, predictably, has all the vegetarians in a snit over some of the, how shall we say this? – meatier phrases – but we are sure the veggies will chill as soon as they relocate their senses of humor. Meanwhile, three months from now in January, Nielsen has announced they will begin counting a specific demographic – college students – to find out what is going through their minds [besides alcohol and sex, we mean]. This can only mean one thing – a clear gauntlet has been laid down for college students across the land to, three months hence, make Mr. Meaty the new king of TV. The Nielsen suits already know the students watch Adult Swim, now they need a name and that name is Meaty.

While the Nielsen suits are busy counting up college students watching TV, the NCAA suits are busy trying to avoid paying taxes – ah, that traditional American pastime. Seems as though the NCAA has, up until now, enjoyed special double secret probation-type tax-exempt status and has had to pay no taxes on the billions of dollars the major networks keep shoveling into their piggy banks because they claim to be a nonprofit organization and claim they put 95% of their revenues back into the organization. The executive director of Charity Navigator – an online database that rates charitable organizations – says, "If I run an animal shelter, and have a big party and get everyone in town to come and there's entertainment involved and the local band plays and we raffle of tickets, that's legitimate nonprofit income and I don't have to tax it." To which the Lounge replies – What kind of entertainment are we talking about here? Sword swallowers? Pole dancers? And is the local band U2 because you're holding the party in Ireland? And by everyone, do you mean Paris Hilton too? Because we hear she likes to go to parties. Lotsa Lounge questions – but hey, at least we know big-time Vegas mogul Steve Wynn won't be at the party. That's because he is busy drinking a few more bottles of his very expensive champagne after putting an elbow hole in his very expensive Picasso painting. But the Lounge bets [get it? – bets – hahahaha…ahem] maybe he feels like a good episode of Mr. Meaty right about now.

"Well, I guess the Cougs shut the Duck up!" says Stan Ford, no relation to the Farm.

It's funny. Ten, perhaps 15, years ago, there was little or no animosity toward Oregon and any of its athletic programs but the emergence of Mr. Nike – Phil Knight, laughable billboards and other advertising gimmicks, equally laughable mascots and then….the uniforms. It just changed everything. The Huskies used to be the royalty of the ridiculous excess but now the Quacks have usurped that crown – for now. So it was interesting that Oregon "won" a football game against Oklahoma earlier this year due to a Pac-10 officiating error. The Lounge went on record back then as saying there was going to be karma to pay for that win and what do you know – lookie what we have here – a Cougar smushing of the Ducks to the tune of 11 points – but it was worse than that. In reality, the Ducks' karmic comeuppance may have come two weeks before when they were smushed even worse by California, but that's merely a matter of quibbling. The Cougars have been close to the Quacks for many of the years – with a 55-16 anomaly interspersed in there – but this game was predictable. Coming into the game, Oregon had been soft in disposing of UCLA and it looked almost certain that the Cougars were going to play better than they had in a ugly loss to Cal the previous week. Sure enough, Oregon looked as expected and Wazzu looked as expected and Oregon native quarterback Alex Brink – minus one bad interception that did not wind up hurting the team – had the best day of his Cougar career, completing his personal Oregon sweep for the first time ever. With the win, the Cougars have the inside track on third place in the Pac-10 and the Sun Bowl. One more win and they are eligible for any bowl, which, after being away from the bowl scene for three years, is good but getting the best bowl – and most money possible – is the main goal now. With three losses, and all three coming to Top 10 teams, Wazzu is looking good – they are #25 in the BCS standings – for a post-season payoff of some sort.

"I know it's early but it looks like it's going to be a good year," says V. de Milo, who can relate to Steve Wynn's plight.

Well, let's not jump the proverbial gun there V. Nothing is carved in stone yet – get it? Carved in stone? Hahahahahahahahaha…snort. Okay, what we meant to say, no we actually meant to say that carved in stone thing but the other thing is that things look promising in football, soccer [ where the Cougs are 3-1-1 and sitting in the top half of the pac-10 – two wins away from a probable NCAA berth] and volleyball [where the Cougs are 14-8 overall and probably about six wins away from possible NCAA consideration] – all close but definitely no cigars yet. Both the men's and women's hoop teams have begun practicing and both look like they have post-season possibilities – for both programs, this will not require hallucinogens to speak those words in the same sentence.

The month of October is almost over and yet there are still people out there who do not realize that it is college football season. How do we know this? Well, we moseyed on over to Broken Cowboy because the bluebird of happiness told us to go there [well, the bluebird put a gun to our heads and forced us to go there – don't believe the hype on that bluebird] and what we found was one sorry dude. We went expecting some witty college football [because, you know, we reiterate, that's what season it is…] banter and all we got was some whining about something that, to our clientele's best coherent guess, was some incoherent babbling about monkey bars [do they still call' em monkey bars and who are "they" anyway?] and the wife going to Costco in between the day the Easter Bunny gives out free chocolate [as is our current understanding of the holiday] and Santa Claus passes out the gifts. Yes, yes, we know what the point was but dadgummit, man, the last entry in this blog is three weeks ago and it's not a very becoming one at that! Somebody needs to watch Mr. Meaty.

Finally, the Lounge Scientists know what is on those adolescents' brains – themselves, of course. As everybody in the world surely knows by now – the world revolves around adolescents and Bill Gates - but the adolescents aren't cutting Bill any slack there. Now, the scientists have discovered why – because the teens use a different portion of their brain than adults to make decisions. Adolosecnts between the ages of 11 and 17 were tested against so-called adults between the ages of 21 to 37 [the Lounge scientists are highly suspicious of any adults in the 20s – highly suspicious] and found that, in essence, the adolescents used the rear portion [responsible for basic behavioral actions] of their brain while the adults used the front portions, associated with more complex behavioral functions.

"Teenagers are less able to understand the consequences of their actions," reports Lounge Scientist #8 Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who is an adult who was reportedly once a teenager.

It has been reported that the only thing that may work for the wayward teen brain is watching many episodes of Mr. Meaty. But further research needs to be conducted into the matter – preferably in three months.

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