The Cougar Lounge - Six Charlies, Seven Horses

"I am very happy where I'm at."

- Wazzu head soccer coach Matt Potter, confirming his desire to stay in Pullman in the wake of the resignation of Arizona head coach - and his former boss at Wazzu - Dan Tobias.

"They were, tactically, a hard team to break down, and they grew in confidence as the game went along."

- Stanford head women's soccer coach Paul Ratcliffe, after the Cougars came within 3:12 of defeating the top-ranked Cardinal last week.

"There's still just one team that wins - and all we've done is spend a whole lot more money for no significantly different outcome."

- University of California-Berkeley public policy professor Michael O'Hare pointing out that in a majority of the Division I schools across the country, the football program receives the lion's share of the revenue and despite rocketing revenues for some, the majority of athletic departments continue to post deficits, due, in part, to an incessant need to participate in an athletic spending "arms race".

"That became kind of a college, beer-drinking movie, so it stayed popular for way longer than Moranis and I ever thought it would."

- Actor-comedian Dave Thomas, recounting the popularity of the movie Strange Brew in which he plays his famous SCTV-inspired McKenzie brother along with fellow actor-comedian Rick Moranis.

There can be no denial about Halloween. Simply put, it is the greatest holiday of the year. How many other national holidays [yes, yes, we know it is not a national officially-recognized holiday, do not get all anal on us - but it has the national holiday "spirit"] does one get to dress up in virtually any manner the imagination can conjure? The best thing about Halloween is partly the encouragement the country gives to this fun day [and night] and partly the curiosity of seeing what ideas people come up with when it comes to their costume choices. For kids, it is usually popular culture that reigns supreme, so you wind up seeing a lot of reminders whatever was popular to the kiddies this year and that wound up being Hannah Montana, Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob - along with traditional favorites like witches, ghosts, vampires and inflatable sumo wrestler suits. For the adults, there are far more options. This is for several reasons - most adults are no longer swayed by the awesome power of peer pressure [we say "most adults", fully realizing there are still plenty of lemmings out there in the general populace] and feel free to let their imaginations run wild. Sometimes, it does not run very far - Michael Jackson was a popular adult costume this year. But this year, with Halloween being on a Saturday, it meant there was going to be some nog [or nog substitute]-inspired costume decisions and while we are partial to the banana, orange roughy [it is a fish] and Gumby from Monty Python costumes we saw - the clear winner for 2009 Lounge Best Costume Award went to the dude we saw dressed up as Pee Wee Herman with full-on outfit featuring the white shoes, red bow tie, gray suit and buzz cut. Hands down, the best we saw this year.

Of course, we would have like to have seen airline pilots using their laptops - but that costume choice may have only been popular in Minnesota - as it was learned that the pilots who flew way past the Minneapolis airport [not, in itself, such a big crime] were not asleep but instead were too immersed in their personal laptops to bother with flying the plane and landing it. Oh okay, that is much better than sleeping. Of course, if anybody has been around people who get immersed in their laptops, they can attest that it might as well be the same thing as sleeping. Needless to say, the pilots had their licenses revoked for "sleeping" on the job.

Probably the only thing more surprising was the fact that Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to hire Family Guy creator, Seth MacFarlane to promote their new Windows software and were shocked - shocked, we tell you - when it was learned that MacFarlane makes a living out of subversive humor techniques and topics. Who would have known!? We are not sure what planet the Microsoft executives are living on but apparently it is not Earth if they did not realize what they were signing up for when they signed MacFarlane to tout their product. MacFarlane has made a living - a wealthy living - out of skewering everything that moves and in this case, it included deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest - and that is their tame list. Now that they know, perhaps Microsoft will consider moving back to Earth from Mars - or wherever it is they were residing at the time.

MacFarlane graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in fine arts and we all know how much money he is making - well, we do not know exactly, but we do know it is much more than we will ever see in our lifetime plus the lifetimes of several dozen other people we know - and that just goes to show why a degree in the arts is a good thing for a school to offer. Teenager Brianna Spilde was thinking the same thing [although perhaps not in a MacFarlane kind of way - not many people think in a MacFarlane kind of way, to be truthful] when she wanted to attend Wazzu because of the school's acclaimed theater arts program only to discover in this article from the Oregonian, that it no longer existed due to budget cuts. Meanwhile, the athletic department receives $1.5 million from Notre Dame and NBC for a single football game.

That reminds us - it is National College Football Day this Saturday and that will provide the Cougars with another opportunity to prove that they do, indeed, play college football, but more importantly, it will be another opportunity for people located in Louisville, Kentucky, to drink bourbon. We know that is going to happen because the crack Lounge research staff has compiled a list of the Top 10 places in the country where adults consume bourbon on days other than Halloween when it is on a Saturday and they are dressed like Pee Wee Herman - and the top place in the nation for that kind of liquid recreation is in Louisville, Kentucky - National College Football Day or not. The top Pacific Northwest location for bourbon-imbibing is Portland - and we will leave it up to your imagination as to why that is the case.

"Why can't the Cougars play in Portland again?" asks Counterfeit Bill about Wazzu's NCAA destination in next week's soccer tournament.

Well, they can, Bill, it is just not too likely if they keep on winning - so it comes down to the quandary of do you want them to keep on winning or do you want them to play in Portland? Right now, Wazzu is 22nd in the last iteration of the official NCAA RPI. But that was two weeks ago and, since then, the Cougars have won five of their last six matches with their only loss coming in overtime to the top-ranked Stanford Cardinal. That means - providing they take care of business against Pac-10 winless Oregon today - they should likely be in the Top 15 in the RPI when it comes out again. If they defeat USC and UCLA at home next week, they will likely be in the Top 10 while also finishing in second place in the Pac-10 [barring the unlikely occurrence of Stanford losing twice]. All that means that Wazzu would most likely be awarded either a #2 or #3 seed and the NCAA would probably not keep them in Portland's pod, preferring instead to have Portland have lower seeds to play against in the first and second rounds. With Portland State winning the Big Sky championship and hosting the NCAA-determining tournament this week, it is possible that the Vikings could play in Portland along with Washington and some other out-of-area team such as Colorado College. Wazzu could be sent to another region - perhaps on the West Coast, perhaps not - as a higher seed where they will be expected to advance to the second round and beyond. With that situation, it is possible that Portland could also host a Sweet 16 round match and the Cougars could play in the Rose City in that scenario. The only thing we know for sure - everything will be clear by next Monday, when the official selections, locations and brackets are announced at 5pm on ESPNews.

"Where does all that money go?" asks Mr. Buenos Aires of the Cougars' $1.5 million windfall from playing Notre Dame last week.

We know you are hoping that you will get a chunk of the money to service your motorized trampoline, Mr. BA, but in reality, it will go toward reducing the athletic department budget of Washington State University. Now, where, exactly the funds will be dispersed in that regard is anybody's guess, but the largest portion is expected to go to the football program - a program which surely needs some kind of cash infusion if they are ever going to score a touchdown in the first quarter of a football game again. The Cougars have now been outscored 121-3 in the first quarter of this year's games and the more advanced math whizzes out there will quickly deduce that this means they have yet to score a touchdown in the first quarter. In fact, the Cougars have not scored a touchdown in the first quarter of any game in nearly one full calendar year - November 8, 2008, to be exact - was the last time the Cougar football team not only scored a touchdown in the first quarter but it was also the last time they scored first in a Pac-10 game. That is a stretch of 11 games so far and, ironically enough, this week's opponent is Arizona in Tucson.

In the classic film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there is a scene where John Cleese, playing a silly French knight, promises to "fart in the general direction" of the silly English "ka-niggets". In reality, there really was a silly French person who farted in the general direction of everybody and his name was Le Petomane. He had a real name you know. You know what he's called? Incontinentia Buttocks.

Late autumn and early winter is the cold and flu season, everybody, even the Lounge Scientists know that - but how many people know why certain people cannot smell asparagus in their urine after they have eaten said vegetable or why certain people have a tendency to sneeze when exposed to bright light? It is all due to genetic variants according to company composed of scientists called 23AndMe.

"They've demonstrated that they can do genome-wide association studies and do them well," says Lounge Scientist #23, Daniel MacArthur, a scientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England, who reputedly sneezed upon reading some of the results from the company's studies.

How many people sneeze when faced with Pee Wee Herman's blindingly white shoes? This study is still being conducted at the company.

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