Gearing Up for a Grudge Match

Game-Day Update Below

ESPN is billing tomorrow night's second-round matchup between Maryland and Louisville in the women's NCAA tournament as a grudge match. That sounds about right to the rabid Terp fans of Roxie's World, who have never gotten over the beat down Maryland suffered at the hands of Coach Jeff Walz's Cardinals in the 2009 Elite Eight. It isn't just the score -- 77-60 -- that still stings, painful as it was to watch the glorious collegiate careers of Marissa Coleman and Kristi Toliver end on such a sour note. What rankles even more is what Walz did when the final whistle blew and Coleman and Toliver sat stunned and disconsolate on the Maryland bench. Walz is a former Maryland assistant coach who was with the team when Brenda Frese guided a group of upstart freshmen, including Coleman and Toliver, to a national championship in 2006. He relied on his intimate knowledge of Maryland's players and its system to formulate a game plan that exploited its weaknesses. His team executed the plan brilliantly -- and when the dismantling was over Walz made a beeline for Coleman and Toliver and tried to comfort the women he had just defeated. Here's what we wrote about the gesture the day after the game:

At that moment when cameras were focused on the devastated stars, Walz, engineer of their disappointment, went over to each of them, got down on his knees, and put his arms around them. Moose thought there was something jarring about it at the time. It seemed disingenuous of him to take on the role of comforting them for a loss he and his team would be boasting about in a matter of seconds. Word of friction between Walz and Frese makes the gesture even harder to take. If Walz sincerely wished to express sympathy to Coleman and Toliver or admiration for their brilliant careers, he should have done so out of the limelight and only after Coleman and Toliver had had a chance to compose themselves. To insert himself into that moment was to take on a role that rightly belonged to his old boss and, apparently, his new foe. He beat her team, handily. He didn't need to try to usurp her role.  

We don't know anything about the rumors of bad blood between Frese and her former assistant (pictured at left in a slightly altered photo from 2006 [via]), which surfaced in the wake of the 2009 contest, but we have a hunch we're not the only ones hungering for a little revenge tomorrow night. When the brackets for this year's tournament were announced and it was clear the Terps and Cardinals could meet again, Marissa Coleman immediately tweeted (yes, Moose follows her -- don't judge) of the matchup: "TERPS get some payback for @KristiToliver and I, would ya?!" (Love you, Shoulders, always will, but that should read, "for @KristiToliver and me.") During first-round action Saturday at the Comcastle, some fans might have greeted Walz with warm fuzzies when he took the floor for his team's game against Michigan State, but there was no love lost for Louisville's head coach up where the Moms sit in section 114. When the short-fused Walz loudly berated a player for throwing up a bad shot (when the Cards already had a comfortable lead), a fan/friend mockingly repeated the coach's rebuke, adding in his own booming voice, "We could hear you all the way up here, Walz!" After that, we spent the rest of the not very entertaining game dissecting Walz's issues -- "He's got an Auriemma complex," one Freudian averred -- and concocting elaborate plots to guarantee a Terp victory tomorrow night, most of which involved sending spoiled seafood to the Louisville team's hotel.

Yes, darlings, that's why they call it Madness, this seasonal affective disorder college basketball fans experience every year come tournament time. We love the game, adore our team, and live for the drama of the major upset or the thrilling comeback. Or, you know, the sweet revenge.

We'll be in the stands tomorrow night, maybe with a special sign imploring the Terps to win it for Marissa and K. T. or to remember 2009. On the other hand, why should we burden these splendid young women with the bitter residue of someone else's past? Their talents and accomplishments are impressive in and of themselves, and they deserve their own shot at glory. It would be hard to fit our sentiments onto even the most carefully painted sign, but perhaps we'll show up at the Comcastle tomorrow with the hope in our hearts that these dazzling young Terps will win on Monday so that we will have the joy of knowing we will get to see them play together again -- at least once more before this special season, like all seasons, ends, in triumph or its opposite.

Sleep well, women. You've got your work cut out for you, and we can't wait to cheer you on in your efforts. Peace out.

(Photo Credit: Toni L. Sandys, Washington Post. Maryland forward Alyssa Thomas shoots over Navy's Alix Membreno in a first-round game, 3/17/12.)

Update: WaPo's Gene Wang has a story this morning on the Frese/Walz "subplot" in the looming rematch between Maryland and Louisville. According to Wang, Walz's departure from College Park in 2008 was "acrimonious," though Frese refused to comment on the matter, saying it was not important to the upcoming game. Reading between the lines, one might infer that Walz took a little too much credit for the national championship, including orchestrating the play that sent the title game into overtime. In this YouTube video of Marissa Coleman and other former players talking about that game, Coleman makes it clear that Toliver's sublime shot over Duke center Alison Bales was not the play coaches had drawn up. After the 2009 loss to Louisville, Coleman also publicly took issue with Walz's suggestion that Maryland's body language suggested the team was taking Louisville lightly as it focused on getting back to the Final Four. "Well, Coach Walz was wrong," Coleman commented when told what Walz had said.

Like we said, dude's got an Auriemma complex. We don't care what motivates the Terps to go out and get the W tonight. We just want them to win, but if it turns out the victory is fueled by a collective gynocentric urge to smack down an arrogant, bullying mansplainer, well, that's all right by us. We are women, hear us roar. Go, Terps!

New Tools, Old Rules

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Moose's new iPad, which she got today, not because she camped out for three days but because she quite uncharacteristically planned ahead. She even got the taxpayers of Maryland to buy it for her as an early birthday present. Yep, no money for raises, but plenty for toys essential research tools. We'll let you know soon what she really thinks of it, though so far she's pretty impressed. She's been fiddling around while watching hoops this evening during the Night of a Thousand Upsets. (Poor Duke. Not!)

The Moms head over to the Comcastle early in the a.m. to catch the red hot Lady Terps in first-round action against Navy in the women's tournament. Maybe we'll do some b-ball posting over the weekend, on a machine that's really built for blogging. (Full disclosure: This post was drafted on the iPad but finished on the computer, because Moose couldn't figure out how to embed links or upload photos to Blogger on her fancy new toy tool.) Meantime, here's a sample of what the highly touted camera on the new iPad can do, even in crummy light:

(Photo Credit: Moose, 3/16/12)

Not bad for a stale shamrock cookie from the co-op, eh? Remember, Goose is only half Irish-ish, so we don't really celebrate. If you do, we hope you have a swell, safe time. Peace out, my little leprechauns, and don't cry if your brackets are busted. Everybody's are, but all that matters is Duke is out (of the non-lady tournament), which means all is half-right in the world. We'll see what happens to the Blue Devils in the women's tournament, though we have a hard time seeing them get past Stanford in the Elite 8. Just remember House Rule #1 of Roxie's World, sports fans: We hate Duke so much that if Duke were playing the Taliban, we would root for the Taliban. Therefore, any team playing Duke is known as the Taliban, and we sit on the couch screaming, "Go, Taliban, go!"

Got it? Go forth and cheer.

Today in My Typist Is STILL Too Busy to Blog

Now With Tiny Violins!

Srsly. More than a week of radio silence around here, and my typist still insists she doesn't have time for a proper post. Dammit, Moose, we gotta give 'em something! I don't want to become known as the Grover Norquist of East Blogistan, starving the beast of my vast readership because you're having a hard time keeping up with yourself these days. Fine, Moose grumbled as she struggled to stuff all the balls she'd been juggling into her book bag before heading off to campus. Here, Rox. Throw 'em a bone. Let 'em watch the adorable vid I shot of the Norwood School orchestra earnestly sawing away on "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Sunday's game against Duke. It's cute, even if I didn't get the whole song, very nearly as cute as a damn cat video, and it proves that our national anthem is very nearly as hard to play as it is to sing. Throw in a Whitney Houston tie-in, and we're good to go.

Desperate times, desperate measures, people. Sometimes you go with the post you got, not with the post you want. These kids really are cute, and the Lady Terps snatched victory away from the Blue Devils with brilliant play in the final minute. The hearty "woohoooooo" you hear as the little fiddlers finish off the anthem is of course Moose, beside herself with excitement as tipoff approaches. She was so psyched for the big game that she even indulged in a bit of face-painting -- and learned by halftime that the reason face-painting is for kids and not for grownups is that grownups get stressed out when their team falls behind by 12 points early in the game, rub their faces, and turn a pretty red "M" into a big schmear that starts at the cheek and runs all the way up the forehead. Oops.

In any case, here, for your mid-week pleasure, are the little fiddlers of the Norwood School, forcing us to wonder, yet again, why we have marching bands but not marching orchestras. Don't say we never gave you nothin', people. Peace out.

 

Contact -- and Non-Contact

This kicks off Monday at QTU, which partly explains the radio silence around here lately.

(Image Credit: Mira Azarm, Assistant Director for Client Publications, QTU)

Moose has also been a bit preoccupied by the action on marriage equality in Annapolis and by preparations for this big gay fundraiser (which you should totes support/attend if you happen to be in the 'hood on Feb. 23), which she is co-hosting in her capacity as big gay member of the Board of Directors of this organization.

Also, we've been having our hearts broken by both Lady and Non-Lady Terps. Oh, basketball, you can be a cruel mistress.

It's not that we don't love you, darlings. We do. Indeed, we will allllllllllllllllllways love youuuuuuuuuu. (Whitney? Girl? Are you freaking kidding me?)

We're just ridiculously busy. Don't hate us. We shall return. Swear to dog.

The Quiet Season

Or, Things We Did While Not Attending MLA 2012

Dr. Crazy went and so did Undine, but for the first time since 1995 neither of the English profs of Roxie's World attended the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, which concluded yesterday in the highly caffeinated city of Seattle. We're huge fans of the organization and its annual shindig but opted out this year because we weren't giving papers or shopping book manuscripts or serving on search committees and therefore couldn't quite justify the time and expense of a cross-country trip. So, what'd we do instead?

We burrowed in. Hunkered down. Laid low.

We decluttered. Depilated. Decompressed.

We ran a little. Walked a little. Finally tried Zumba. (Verdict? Not sure yet. Further research will be necessary, but Moose is not convinced her cardiovascular health requires quite that much hip action. She also recalls, however, that she felt similarly skeptical after her first aerobics class, once upon a time in the 80s.)

We toiled happily away on the kind of work that is hard to do when classes are in session and the calendar is a multicolored vortex of obligations. Goose had a 2-day team meeting for one of her electronic projects. Moose shifted into cruise-director mode to hammer out the details for the upcoming celebrations of her queer studies program's tenth anniversary. (I know: ten years of queering the turtle! Can you stand it? Click here for some of the scoop on what's in store. Details coming soon.)

Oh, and we watched us some basketball, because our fifth-ranked Lady Terps needed us to make sure they got through the weekend with their perfect record in tact. Fine, sophomore forward Alyssa Thomas helped, too, with her 24 points in Friday's heart-stopping comeback against Georgia Tech and her buzzer-beater that put Sunday's road game against Carolina into overtime, but we know that our passionate devotion helped carry the mighty women of Maryland to 16-0. 16-0!!!

After the haircut (the aforementioned depilation), Moose was hungry and so took herself to lunch. She had tapas. And a glass of white wine. It was Friday. She had gone for a run. Tapas is the perfect way for Lifestyle Adjusters to dine well without having to declare PointsPlus bankruptcy. She had a shredded cod salad, because a friend whose judgment she trusts says that if cod is on the menu you should always order it. She was not disappointed.

Then she went to a museum, because it was there. And there is a Gertrude Stein show she's been meaning to see for months but hadn't yet and now it's about to leave town, so she finally popped in. It's not the bestest exhibit ever, despite the forthright documenting of Stein's sexuality and her relationship with Alice B. Toklas and some marvelous images of the two women and their dog Basket, but it's well worth seeing. Moose was pleased to be able to snatch a pic of Jo Davidson's massive terra cotta sculpture of Stein, which she likes to think of as the precursor to the bronze Thinking Woman she brought home with her from New Mexico a couple of years ago.

What else did we do while not schmoozing, boozing, and cruising at the MLA? We watched Homeland, all 12 white-knuckle, Claire Danes-ilicious episodes. The show strains credulity in precisely the ways our pal Jill Dolan blogged about in November (before the season had ended) and its finale is vexing in all the ways David Haglund and June Thomas discuss in Slate. Nonetheless, the writing (if not the plotting) and the performances make Homeland riveting to watch. It's a fraught and fascinating piece of post-9/11 cultural work that deftly probes the psychic costs of living with and in the massive state (in)security apparatus that took hold in the United States in the wake of the fall 2001 attacks. Danes plays Carrie Mathison, a CIA officer haunted by the feeling that she missed something on 9/11 that might have thwarted the attacks. Damian Lewis plays Nicholas Brody, a Marine sergeant who was held captive by Al-Qaeda for eight years and has just been released and returned home. Carrie believes he was turned while in captivity and is now part of a plot to attack the U. S. Much of the thrill of this taut, smart thriller is in watching the dynamics of the Mathison-Brody relationship and trying to figure out who is manipulating whom and to what end. How much of what happens between them is personal and how much is a matter of each working to advance the goals of their competing missions? We don't want to give anything away. Go watch the show if you can. Then come back here prepared to discuss Homeland's complex racial/sexual/religious politics and the burning question of whether Claire's electroshock therapy will erase the crucial piece of evidence she recognized in that last moment before the big buzz jolted her brain. Hurry! We are dying to have this conversation with you!

One more thing we did while not attending the MLA? Moose took a lot of pictures with her new iPhone 4S, which is, as the hype suggests, equipped with a camera so good you might be tempted to stuff all your old point-and-shoots in the back of some closet. Both photos above were taken with her fun new toy, as was the one below, which we offer by way of returning to the theme of quietness and winter rest with which this post began. Here's hoping you've found such time at the beginning of this brave new year. Peace out, my pretties, and, again, a very happy new year to you and yours.

End of Spring Break Link & Photo Farm

Or, Notes on Stuff We'd Be Blogging About If We Had Time to Blog, Which We Don't Because My Typist Actually Took Something of a Break This Week and Now Has to Spend the Day Doing Everything She Was Pretending She'd Get Done Over "Break"

(Photo Credit: Moose, with Hipstamatic, 3/26/11. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.)

Big Love: Series Finale. It's been a week since (spoiler alert!) the queerest show on television ended its five-year run on HBO not with a whimper but a bang that liberated the three sister-wives of Bill Henrickson to fulfill the dreams of non-Mormon Sapphists from sea to shining sea. You know the burly girls of Roxie's World were pleased with the show's Thelma & Louise & Nicki denouement. Beyond that, we have little to say, except that we will miss a show that stayed so true to its characters and was so deeply intelligent about complex intimacies and, you know, one of the wackier religions ever to have gotten hatched on American soil. There's a lot of great stuff out there on the winding down of the show. Take a listen to Terry Gross's conversation with Big Love's creators, Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer, or check out Allyssa Lee's interview with them in the LA Times. It's kind of cute to see the show's two (gay, male, married [to each other]) chief architects seeming wounded and perplexed that the audience pretty much wanted Bill to die to get him out of the wives' way, while they saw his death as a way to preserve his vision without having to figure out how he would support his large family once he had lost Home Plus. Vision, schmision, the audience seemed to say. Kill Bill, and the sister-wives will figure it all out. Which the final scene, eleven months after Bill's death, makes clear is exactly what happened. You go, Barb, priest-holder you. Whatever the heck a priest-holder is. Margene Without Borders, we heart you. And Nicki, we're pleased to see you found the milk of human kindness we always hoped was flowing somewhere beneath your sociopathic surface.

Anyway, for commentary on Big Love's big ending, click over to Undine, Troy Williams, and, again, Allyssa Lee.

College Basketball: Oh, kids, we have nothing to say but "Go, Butler" (in the non-ladies' tournament) and "Please, Stanford?" (in the women's). We were looking forward to having a big blog trash talk smackdown with UConn-loving Tenured Radical, but our beloved Lady Terps got spanked bad Tuesday night by Georgetown, thus denying the little Turtles their chance to go up against the big bad Huskies in the Sweet 16. See ya next year, TR, when Maya Moore will have finally graduated and gone on to a better place (the WNBA? ESPN? grad school?) and our tender Turtles will, we hope, have toughened up a bit on the defensive end of the court. Also, good thoughts go out to Terps forward Diandra Tchatchouang, who tore her ACL in the Georgetown game. The official French speaker of Roxie's World offers a hearty bon rétablissement to Diandra, who hails from La Courneuve, France, as she recovers from her injury.

Death: Death had another big week in the world. What with new revolutions and civil wars breaking out on a daily basis and the toll from Japan's triple-dip disaster still rising, one feels sheepish even mentioning that the nation's supply of Feisty Old Broads took a couple of significant hits this week with the deaths of Elizabeth Taylor and Geraldine Ferraro, but, well, that's the way it is. We raise paws in honor of these gutsy women, pioneers in their different ways and worlds, and thank them for their courage and tenacity. Gina Barreca's got a nice feminist tribute to Taylor up on the Chronicle (H/T Goose) focused on her early, unsung role as Helen Burns in the 1943 version of Jane Eyre. Moose and Goose fondly recall going door-to-door for the Mondale-Ferraro campaign in a small, conservative town on the Jersey Shore back in '84. It was the first but by no means the last time they passionately committed themselves to a losing cause. Twenty-seven years later, they have no regrets.

Who's Reading Your E-Mail? Moose was experiencing fear and loathing of her in-box long before she read the story of University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon being harassed by the state's Republican party, which is using open records laws to gain access to his e-mails since Cronon started writing blog posts and a New York Times op-ed piece focused on the GOP's recent activities in the Badger state. Now, her fear has turned to panic, as she worries that she could get canned for using state resources to mock her state's governor as a fauxgressive pretty boy. Or for her stubborn refusal to use her several different e-mail accounts to separate her professional life from her personal life, her political life, her blog life, and her online shopping life. Historiann has proposed that academics at public universities forward all of their e-mails to Governor Scott Walker and other Republicans in the state. Tenured Radical has a great post up that includes Walker's e-mail address (govgeneral@wisconsin.gov) and lots of terrifying reminders about how e-mail is never private and nothing can ever really be deleted and your university computer can be searched anytime. Moose read that post and has been sitting quietly in a chair ever since. Just staring. And deleting lots and lots of e-mails. See previous paragraph about her fondness for lost causes.

So, kids, how are your brackets holding up? And how did you waste your spring break? Here's another pretty glimpse of how time slipped away in Roxie's World. Peace out, lovelies.

(Photo Credit: JK, Sister of the Goosians, 3/25/11. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC.)

Fight the Power

A region rocked by threats of violence. Concern about how police will react if students take to the streets, set fires, destroy property. Will there be more beatings? More dubious arrests?

We're talking Cairo, right, weighing in at last on the small matter of the whole future of Egypt and perhaps the Middle East being at stake? Oh, heck no, kids! We're talking College Park, where it's officially "Beat Duke Week," as the Non-Lady Terps prepare to take on the Dark Overlords of Durham tomorrow night. QTU administrators, burned (ahem!) by negative press coverage of student riots celebrations that have followed recent Duke games, are being proactive this time in trying to manage the violence youthful exuberance likely to erupt. There are tee-shirts! Student marshals! A sanctioned bonfire! Holy-moly, turtles, there's even a prayer rally!

Moose thought that last bit was an especially nice touch, figuring the point was to try to commandeer the support of the Almighty in the effort to defeat the third-ranked Overlords, who got spanked hard by unranked St. John's at Madison Square Garden this past Saturday. I mean, come on, sports fans, Jordan Williams can't do it all on his own, can he? Anyway, turns out the prayer rally is for safety and sportsmanship, not for an effective perimeter defense, but Moose is hoping one of the faithful will sneak in a tiny request for the latter along with the former. Shoot, as long you've got the Big Guy on the line, you might as well go for it, right?

Do we need to make it clear that we don't take lightly these concerns about public safety and reputation? Do we need to say that of course we hope students will go bonkers in their expressions of public happiness or disappointment without breaking laws -- and that this time the local constabulary won't decide to kick the crap out of kids who don't appear to be doing anything wrong? Fine. We said it. Now, can we get back to figuring out how the gritty yet inconsistent Non-Lady Terps are going to crush the Evil Empire? We've got a game to win, people, and I've got two words for you: free throws.  

Peace out, and may good conquer evil, always and everywhere.

(Photo Credit: Terrell N. Roberts, via. William Wang alleged he received these wounds in a confrontation with Prince George's County Police after a Maryland-Duke basketball game on March 4, 2010.)

News, With Lesbian Tendencies

Item One: Bad Story, Funny Headline

Marquette Withdraws Job Offer to Lesbian Dean Candidate Jodi O'Brien

Which means, of course, that the all-important position of Dean of Lesbians remains vacant. Moose would like to apply. For the benefit of the good Jesuits of Marquette, we offer this link to a not-quite-current version of Moose's CV, where you will find, we promise, absolutely no "strongly negative statements about marriage and family" and, regrettably, no "vignettes on lesbian sex." (How did that happen? I said to Moose. Heck if I know, she replied. Blame it on Willa. She was just not into . . . vignettes.) (And, yes, Death Comes for the Archbishop fans, we know that, technically speaking, that isn't correct. Comic license, 'k?)

Item Two: Women's Basketball Coaches Still Prefer to Focus on the Family

We picked this up from Pat Griffin's LGBT Sports Blog by way of Nan Hunter. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association refused to screen the film Training Rules, a documentary about player Jennifer Harris' lawsuit against Penn State's legendary (and legendarily homophobic) women's basketball coach Rene Portland, at its annual conference last month in San Antonio. (The conference was held in conjunction with the NCAA women's basketball championship. Local coverage, from which we've borrowed details of the story, here.) The reason given for not screening the film is that Portland is no longer coaching. She resigned in 2007, after Penn State settled Harris' lawsuit -- Which of course magically resolved the issue of homophobia in women's basketball, so, please, sports fans, let's all just go back to talking about how married and religious and heterosexually reproductive everybody associated with this game is. That's not homophobia, dammit! That's just clean living and good advertising, am I right? Pay no attention to all those big-boned gals on the floor and in the stands. There are no lesbians here, do you hear me? Just, you know, burly girls with incredible strength and ball-handling skills who seem to prefer, um, the company of, uh, well, chicks, but, hey, look at those junior cheerleaders doing their little half-time show. Aren't they just adorable?

People, people, people, let me say it for you one more time, very slowly: Women's basketball would die without the participation and the support of lesbians. Don't disrespect or marginalize your talent pool or your fan base. Silence is homophobia by other means, especially when you go out of your way to promote the "family-friendly" qualities of your program and personnel. You may be a little more polite than the Rene Portlands of the world, but you are still sending a powerfully negative message to queer players and fans. And we think that is unsportsmanlike conduct, plain and simple.

That is all, darlings. Play hard, play fair, and give us a call if the Dean of Lesbians position is available at your school.

(Nuns cheer on the Mighty Macs of Immaculata University, which many consider the birthplace of modern collegiate women's basketball. No lesbians here either, of course. Photo picked up here.)

The ABCDs of Basketball

For the past couple of weeks, as the NCAA basketball tournaments (wimmin's and non-ladies') have careened along from one buzzer-beating, heart-stopping game of the century to the next, the moms have engaged in a steady stream of virtual trash-talk on Facebook, the gist of which, from their perspective, can be expressed in a new rule that Moose announced when she found herself in the awkward position of rooting for Purdue to beat Duke in the Sweet 16. (That was awkward because she comes from a long line of graduates of her native state's other big honkin' public institution of higher ed and basketball, Indiana University.) Anyway, she bit the bullet and declared that she would follow a simple rule to figure out who to root for in any given game: ABCD, she said, meaning Anybody But Connecticut or Duke. Regular readers need no explanation for the "D" part of the rule; the "C" part stems from our constitutional aversion to dynasties and our boredom with the whole Connecticut is unbeatable meme. Oh, plus our pals up at Bruce Springsteen State U (which plays in the Big East) just loathe and detest Geno Auriemma, so we decided to hate him, too, in solidarity with them.

The ABCD rule was strongly in force Monday night as the moms hunkered down in front of the TeeVee for the non-ladies' championship game between the Evil Empire and yet another Indiana school, the one that Moose has never taken especially seriously because it's an itty-bitty private school in some athletic conference she's never heard of. For the night, though, she was happy to follow the logic of ABCD and declare herself a Butler fan. She spent much of the nip-and-tuck game taunting her Duke pals on Facebook and texting furiously with her big brother, another IU grad who lives in Indianapolis and had embraced the cause of the underdog Bulldogs along with all the other Hoosiers still waiting for IU to rebuild its storied basketball program. (Trust me, kids, had IU been in the dance, no one in the state but Butler's boy wonder coach Brad Stevens' mom would have cared if Cinderella managed to get her foot into that slipper. Oh, but speaking of Stevens' mom, she gives a cute interview about her son, who we really think is the most accomplished 12-year old we've ever seen, here.)

Anyway, as the second half of the game went on, with Cinderella relentlessly refusing to admit she was no match for the three mighty Prince Charmings (Jon Scheyer, Nolan Smith, and Kyle Singler) of Duke, Moose suddenly found herself in strange emotional territory. She realized she was no longer watching the game primarily because she hoped Cinderella would find a way to outsmart Prince Charming and snatch the trophy away from the Imperial Army of Durham. She was watching because it was quite simply one of the most glorious games she had ever seen, despite the fact that it was a low-scoring defensive tug-of-war rather than the kind of up-tempo transition game she usually enjoys. For a few minutes, her hatred of all things Duke (I mean, you know, all things basketball-related) melted away, and she sat, mesmerized and breathless, as two talented, brilliantly coached teams battled back and forth to see which would manage to be in the lead when the final buzzer sounded.

As it turned out, of course, the storybook ending was still -- literally -- up in the air as the clock expired. Butler's Gordon Hayward managed to get off a last-second shot from half-court that would have given Butler the win if it had gone in, but the shot hit the backboard and the front rim before falling futilely away from the basket. And just like that, the season was over, and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski had his fourth national championship.

In the closing minutes, Moose put a status line up on Facebook that probably shocked friends who expect torrents of anti-Duke invective from her any time the Blue Devils are on the floor. "Gotta say it," she confessed. "Just. Loving. This. Game." To her surprise, the feeling held up even after the game ended and the Duke celebration began. Perhaps it was because Coach K was both gracious and humble in victory. He looked a little shocked himself, as he tried to absorb the outcome. He heaped praise upon Butler and seemed slightly mournful about the game being over. "I love this team," he said, "and this is the last time we will ever play together." (We think that's what he said, anyway. Oddly enough, it's hard to find transcripts of court-side interviews, and we haven't been able to track down the vid either, but Krzyzewski says something similar in this low-key interview with ESPN's Andy Katz: "A lot of teams take stuff from you because you're trying to convince them to do things. This team filled you up . . . . I hope I'll have a team like this again. I really do.")

It's hard to hate a guy who chokes up at the realization that victory in sport is not, as we so often seem to imagine, some kind of triumph over death but is in fact a form of death. The buzzer sounds, and, win or lose, the teams who have played this spectacular game are teams no more. You can hardly blame Coach K for seeming like the bar patrons in those Buffalo Wild Wings commercials who plead to have games sent into overtime in order to extend the pleasures of watching them. We didn't want this one to end either, Coach, and for once that was not because we couldn't bear to see you and your team win. Games like this make us proud to be fans of college basketball, despite all its flaws and its tendency to produce, if not flat-out corruption, then often badly skewed priorities. Games like this remind us of why we started saying a few years ago that we heart college basketball because it's "like life, only sweatier." We don't want the game to end because we don't want the team and all its dreams and all the parts of ourselves wrapped up in those dreams to die.

(For some wonderful writing on the Duke-Butler game by actual sportswriters, check out John Feinstein in WaPo and Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated.)

Of the wimmin's championship, played last night in San Antonio, we have next to nothing to say. The ABCD rule failed to prevent Connecticut from winning its second consecutive title and its 78th straight game. (Shall we pause here for a moment while my typist yawns over her keyboard? Feel free to get up and stretch if you, too, are bored contemplating the sheer perfection of UConn.) It was a weird, ugly game, with Connecticut held to just 12 (yes, 12!) points in the first half and Stanford once again folding more or less quietly in the second half under a barrage of brilliant shooting from junior Maya Moore. The only bright spot as far as we are concerned? Well, um, our blog pal Tenured Radical is happy with the outcome. That's the best we can do, sports fans.

Final thoughts on the basketball season just concluded? Flat-out most memorable moment of the tournament has to be seeing West Virginia coach Bob Huggins down on the floor trying to console senior Da'Sean Butler, who collapsed with a torn ACL in West Virgina's semifinal game against Duke on Saturday. It was a remarkable moment of raw emotion that gave viewers a rare opportunity to witness the powerful intimacy of the coach-player relationship. (See the vid here, if you think you can handle it.) We're tempted to label it the greatest instance of inter-racial homoeroticism since Jim urged Huck to come back to the raft, but such snarkiness wouldn't be fair to Huggins' great compassion and Butler's obvious agony. Instead, we will end by commending the Mountaineers for a gritty performance and wishing Butler well on his recovery.

Until next season, my friends -- When we shall return to pure, unbridled Duke-hatin' and the logic of ABCD will save us from basketball boredom, I promise!

(Image Credits: Picked up here, here, and here.)

Love, Ice Dams, "Hallelujah"

(Image Credit: Our sweet, secret Valentines over at MLA2010.)

This isn't really a Valentine post. The moms aren't so into the Valentine thing, being congenitally opposed to all commercially manufactured public displays of emotion. Well, maybe not all of them. As you know, they would occasionally dress me up in wizard costumes and reindeer ears to honor certain other holidays that have been turned into orgies of commercial excess, but that was always about cuteness and irony, not the rank sentimentality of Valentine's Day.

Wow, this post is running off the rails as fast a Metro train on a chilly afternoon, isn't it? Yes, yes, my pretties, love conquers all and the moms are happy to raise a glass to love in all its shapes and sizes. They ventured out yesterday to see Jean-Marc Valée's The Young Victoria, which turned out to be a very Valentiny thing to do, given the film's emphasis on the I'll-take-a-bullet-for-you kind of love between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. (That whole bullet thing? Not true, as it happens, but, hey, we cannot let historical accuracy stand in the way of a good story, can we?) And this afternoon, they'll head over to the Comcastle to watch the Terratots take on Clemson, which is also all about the deep, abiding love of sports fandom -- as well as, yes, the thrill of seeing strong, sweaty women in, um, action. Before the game, though, Moose has some ice dam work to do, which is why she can't linger in the red chair trying to explain the mysteries of love to you. She is going to suit up and go outside to investigate the source of a new leak in the casement windows in the dining room. Moose loves those windows, deep and white, and is offended by the idea of their being ruined by water. She is even threatening to ignore all the advice about not going out onto the roof to try to remove snow, because she is so determined to protect this house. It may not be I'll-take-a-bullet-for-you, but if you knew anything about Moose's sense of balance you would realize it was a significant death-defying kind of risk. In Roxie's World this morning, we do sincerely hope that love conquers all -- or that it is at least clever enough to find a way to conquer ice dams.

In the meantime, we offer you this little Valentine, by way of the Reclusive Leftist -- the vid of k.d. lang's performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics Friday night. There are many reasons to heart Canada, of course, but surely one of the best is that our neighbors to the north would decide to kick off the Winter Games by having a beautiful barefooted middle-aged butch belt out a breathtaking song that has not the slightest, even remotest, connection to sport, athleticism, internationalism, victory, or defeat. Yeah, we heart Canada, and we heart k.d. lang. And as always, darlings, we heart you. Hallelujah.

Something for Everybody

It's Friday, darlings. The embodied me has been dead for a little more than two weeks, and countless thousands are dead or missing in Haiti. With all due respect to the grim reaper and the souls of the departed, can we agree that some healthy distraction is in order? Good. I thought so. We've racked our very small brains and trolled the interwebs, trying to come up with tasty treats to appeal to a number of the different demographic groups who hang out here. Even if you don't fit precisely into one of these groups, we hope you'll find something that will burn a few of the seconds that stand between you and happy hour this afternoon. And don't worry -- We'll save you a prime seat at Ishmael's, the seedy yet cozy bar around the corner from the global headquarters of RW Enterprises, LLC. Barkeep Peter Coffin's got half-price specials on rum drinks today, because there's a warming trend happening in our neck of the woods. Come by for a tropical beverage and a towering platter of nachos. Order your own extra queso sauce, though, because you know Moose won't be sharing hers. Love you, darlings. Mean it. Play on.

For the Big and Tall Girls: Put down your hankies and pick up your pom-poms, wimmin, we got us some basketball blogging to do! We apologize for the deplorably late start on this season's worshiping at the Shrine of the Holy Round Ball, but it's taken us some time to get to know Coach B's band of mighty women, a team so new and young that the players have training wheels on their athletic shoes. How young is the team the moms have taken to calling the Baby Terps or the Littlest Turtles or the Terratots? Well, in last night's win over Boston College, the Terps had three freshmen in the starting lineup. This team is so young that sophomore Lynetta Kizer is considered, like, a tribal elder, unless you count guard Lori Bjork, a grad student who joined the Terps last season after three years at Illinois but couldn't play until this year because of NCAA transfer rules. (And you should definitely count Bjork, by the way, who has been rocking the house from 3-point land in the last couple of games and seems to be a calming presence on the floor.) The team seems to be finding its groove after some early losses away from home, including a Tobacco Road meltdown against NC State last week. We're hoping that last night's win, coupled with a squeaker in Charlottesville on Monday, will earn the Baby Terps a spot in next week's top 25. The moms haven't picked a favorite yet among the Terratots, but they are keeping a close eye on 6'3" forward Diandra Tchatchouang (pictured above left; photo by Jonathan Newton, Wa Po) who scored a game-high 18 points against BC. At first they were amusing themselves by trying to come up with nicknames more pronounceable than Tchatchouang. They liked both "Ka-ching" and "Szechuan," but Moose felt so guilty about seeming to mock someone with an unusual name that she started cheering in Tchatchouang's native French. Yep, Diandra, that's us right there at mid-court -- the crazy old broads with the hand-painted signs shouting "Allons y!" every time you touch the ball. Bonne chance, petite tortue!

For the Queer Law Geeks Ambivalent About Marriage But Unable to Stop Paying Attention to the Issue: Big doings this week with the start of the federal case on the constitutionality of California's Prop 8. Perry v. Schwarzenegger may ultimately give the Supreme Court of the United States a chance to weigh in on whether marriage inequality is compatible with those four little words conveniently carved into the frieze the justices see on their way into work each morning. The law prof bloggers have been on this case like white on rice, so click over to see what Katherine Franke has to say about Judge Vaughn Walker's apparent willingness to entertain the idea that the state should get out of the marriage business altogether. Or consult Nan Hunter's list of recommendations of where to go for the best coverage of the trial. Tenured Radical, who is back on native soil and has returned to blogging with a vengeance this week, has a good analysis of the testimony by sex and marriage historians Nancy Cott and George Chauncey.

For English Profs Who Still Can't Believe There Will Never Be Another MLA in December: The backlash is organizing. It's virtual, it's viral, it's as full of irony and wit as a blog written by a really funny dead dog! Inside Higher Ed is already reporting on it. You can follow it on Twitter! Join a Facebook group! Steal cleverly Photoshopped images (as we did, at left) from the blog that's been set up for "MLA 2010, the best conference that never was nor will be." (With the shift in schedule, there won't be a convention in 2010. The next meeting will be in January, 2011 in LA.) We're impressed with this effort and encouraged to see other humanists becoming humorists. (Hey, maybe that's what post-humanism is! Haven't you always wondered?) We think they need some help, though. A virtual mock conference is going to call for a massive effort of faux-organization. (Thought: Here's something Bush could do with his post-presidency!) Roxie's World would like to offer our services to MLA 2010. We'll task our pack of loyal, exceptionally clever readers to help come up with session titles for the conference that shall never be. So far, they've come up with "Teachers Travesty: The Best of Professorial Invective from 2010." That's a good start, but let's keep the ball rolling. Try these on for size:

• When Species Tweet: Dogs, Humans, and the Tools of Social Petworking
• Excellence Without Money: Or, Lies My Provost Told Me
• Reading Gawain in the Age of Obama: Srsly
• "You're dealing with children. They need to be terrified. It's like mother's milk to them": Lessons in Pedagogy from Sue Sylvester
• The Age of Obama or The Obama Era: Which Makes Literary Critics Sound Hipper and More Politically Astute?
• To Hell With PowerPoint: Singing, Dancing, and Success in the Literature Classroom

Hey, it worked for these guys, in a slightly different context:



Your turn, kids. Special session titles due by noon on Monday. Get cracking! Best proposal wins one of those cute mankinis they're flacking over at MLA 2010. Peace out.

Today in Gender

Item One

Wa Po has a pretty good story today by Dana Hedgpeth on the tireless efforts of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) to bring jobs to the state with the nation's highest unemployment rate (15.2%). We totally heart this sharp-as-a-tack power chick and will probably quit our day jobs and go to law school if she ever ends up on the Supreme Court just so we can vie to be one of her love slaves/law clerks. We are trying to make up our minds, though, about the photo and caption Wa Po used to illustrate the story. Study them carefully, kids. There will be a quiz:

The photo is great, of course, and highly flattering to the gov, whom both supporters and detractors call "Jenny the cheerleader," "because of her relentless optimism," according to the story. (Do you really think she got that moniker just because of her optimism, kids? Nah, us neither.) (Granholm prefers to call herself a "zealot.") And Granholm obviously spoke the words used to caption the photo, offering up a pithy compliment to her state's "great bones" and its ability to "build stuff."

Here's what has us scratching our noggins: Is the caption good or bad? Is it a net positive in that it shows a woman leader with the confidence to draw unselfconsciously from two highly gendered image repositories -- i.e., the "female" world of beauty and bone structure and the "male" world of building and other hard "stuff"? Or does it subtly undermine Granholm's credibility as leader of a state reeling from the collapse of the auto industry? Will "good bones" make Michigan competitive in a new economy of high-skilled, environmentally friendly jobs? Or does the beauty-pageant language suggest that the girl gov, who tears up in her office when recalling her failed efforts to convince appliance maker Electrolux to stay in the state, isn't up to the job of bringing jobs to Michigan? Read the story, and tell us what you think.

Item Two

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a brief piece today on a study published by the Wellesley Centers for Women on the disparity in the price of tickets for women's basketball games in comparison to men's games, even on campuses, like the University of Connecticut, where the women's team has a rock 'em, sock 'em record of success (6 NCAA championships, according to the bitter QTU fans of Roxie's World). The study, "Ticket Office Sexism: The Gender Gap in Pricing for NCAA Division I Basketball" by Laura Pappano and Allison J. Tracy (available for purchase on the Wellesley Centers for Women Web site), argues, as its title suggests, that the pricing disparity is a form of discrimination, a sign that women are still de-valued in the traditionally male world of sport. The study argues that the claim that lower ticket prices for women's games are necessary to boost attendance doesn't hold up, because the disparity persists even at schools like Connecticut that have a strong fan base for their women's team.

As you can imagine, this is a story that captured the attention of the feminazi b'ball freaks of Roxie's World, but, surprisingly, our knees didn't reflexively kick out in anger over clear evidence of institutional sexism. As season ticket holders for both men's and women's basketball at QTU, we can tell you there is a significant -- indeed, astronomical -- disparity in pricing right here in our own backyard, although the women's team has a much greater record of accomplishment over the past several seasons as well as some mighty impressive attendance records (which my typist cannot lay her fingers on at the moment, alas). Still, the women don't consistently pack the Comcast Center in the way that the men's team does, even when the non-Lady Terps manage to lose, as they did last season, to the likes of Morgan State. Moreover, sensitive as we are to any sign of gender inequity, we have to admit that we enjoy seeing the Comcast Center filled with screaming kids cheering on the women as they school their opponents in lightning-fast offense. The more affordable pricing structure makes the women's game accessible to those younger fans, who giddily celebrate their birthdays up in suites occupied by corporate fat-cats during the men's games. We don't want to deny revenue to the women's team, but we don't want to deny them crucial opportunities to build their fan base either. And, frankly, we just love the vibe the Comcast Center has during the women's games. Even when the dreaded Dukies are in the house, it's a fun, friendly, happy place to be, and that is by no means always the case when the non-Ladies take the court. Jack up ticket prices, and you run the risk of turning the women's game into what the men's game has become: a grim, money-grubbing diva dance in which every player has his eye on the best deal he can get for himself in the NBA rather than on what's best for the team. It ain't pretty, and a lot of the time it's damn near excruciating to watch.

Wait a minute, kids -- Did Roxie's World just say that sometimes gender inequity is good? WTF? Jump in here and tell us how wrong we are, folks. I think perhaps the high altitude has gone to my typist's head! Peace out and remember: the Lady Terps kick off their 2009-10 season at home against Bowie State at 7 PM on Nov. 4. Moose will be (barely) back from her undisclosed location by then. Where will you be, sports fans? It's the most affordable game in town -- and one of the most exciting!

Renewal

Because it's never too early to start thinking about basketball.

Because in your heart of hearts you long to see your hand-painted signs on the jumbotron at Comcast or in promotional e-mails or on the team's Web site.

Because you want to be there when Moose decides who will succeed Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman as the object of her passionate but completely respectful devotion.

Renew or purchase your Maryland women's basketball tickets now. Or Cannibal Terps will eat your kids for breakfast.

What are you waiting for, turtles? I said RENEW!

End of an Era

(Updated below.)

Maryland basketball fans will remember Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman and Kristi Toliver this way:

Not this way.

We love you. We are proud of you. We will never forget the skill and determination you brought to the game and the glory you brought to your school.

For now, that is all that matters and all we can say. Peace out.

A.M. Update: Here come the obits, the tributes, and the faint whiffs of off-court intrigue.

• Camille Powell recaps the game here. Coach B acknowledges both the heartbreak and the tremendous accomplishment of Coleman and Toliver:

  "It's always tough to have that moment, for seniors, for their careers to end. Especially two seniors like these two," said Coach Brenda Frese, who embraced each player as she left the court. "What they've meant to our team, what they've meant to our program -- you hate for it to end like this. I want to remember all the good times, all the wins. Remember the position they put us in."

• Rick Maese, having doomed Coleman to failure by imagining her in Icarian terms of flight after Saturday's astonishing performance, lets Shoulders and Coleman speak for themselves as they grapple with the raw emotions of a huge defeat. Get out your hankies, and read it here.
• Mike Wise puts himself inside Toliver's head as she tries to find her shot and rhythm in the game, which, because of Louisville's very effective defense, was difficult to do. Read it here. As good as Wise's emotional reconstruction is, the eyebrow-raiser in his column is the suggestion that there is bad blood between Coach B and her former assistant, Louisville head coach, Jeff Walz. The two no longer speak, according to Wise, which makes a moment we noted at the conclusion of the game even more noteworthy. As time expired, the teams went through the traditional line of handshakes and acknowledgment, but Toliver and Coleman stayed on the Maryland bench, too disconsolate to participate in the ritual. At that moment when cameras were focused on the devastated stars, Walz, engineer of their disappointment, went over to each of them, got down on his knees, and put his arms around them. Moose thought there was something jarring about it at the time. It seemed disingenuous of him to take on the role of comforting them for a loss he and his team would be boasting about in a matter of seconds. Word of friction between Walz and Frese makes the gesture even harder to take. If Walz sincerely wished to express sympathy to Coleman and Toliver or admiration for their brilliant careers, he should have done so out of the limelight and only after Coleman and Toliver had had a chance to compose themselves. To insert himself into that moment was to take on a role that rightly belonged to his old boss and, apparently, his new foe. He beat her team, handily. He didn't need to try to usurp her role.

Or so it seems to us, on a sunny morning when March Madness has suddenly turned to March Sadness.

Terp Women Eat Kids -- And Birds

Grilled Cardinal Edition

Let's prepare for this evening's Rumble in Raleigh (Maryland's Elite Eight game against the Cardinals of Louisville) with a few glances back (over our Shoulders, as it were) at Saturday's stunning come-from-behind win over Vanderbilt.

First, in case you missed it, here are court-side interviews with Marissa "Shoulders" Coleman and Coach Brenda Frese from ESPN's broadcast of the game. We love watching Coach B standing in the background with a proud smile on her face while Coleman talks about how much she wanted the win:



Next, we've got several new candidates for the Sportswriters' Epic Simile of the Year Contest (trademark RW Enterprises, LLC), as reporters strained their brains (and, one imagines, Google) in their efforts to describe Shoulders' breathtaking 42 point/15 rebound performance. Just like Shakespeare, only with a distinct odor of gym socks in the air, the sportswriters sit themselves down to ponder the eternal question, "Shall I compare thee to a . . . ?" and the results of their pondering are:

Mike Wise in Wa Po sticks mostly to the world of sports as he endeavors to capture the scale of Coleman's accomplishment, though he tucks in a gratuitous rock 'n roll reference (to Bruce Springsteen, whose E Street Band reunion tour in 2000 played in the same arena, Raleigh's RBC Center, where the game was played). Wise compares Coleman's performance to Michael Jordan scoring 55 points against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden or to a 15-year-old Jason Kidd lighting up the house in Northern California prep championships and concludes that "Coleman's sublime game ranks alongside both of them among the greatest individual performances I've ever covered." Oh, in addition to epic similes, Wise offers the poignant news that Coleman's own mother, Joni, missed her daughter's whirlwind feat because she got so nervous when the Terps fell behind that she couldn't bear to watch (which also happened during the Terps' 2006 run for the championship:

"I was too worried. I had to leave the arena and plug my ears when they started losing," Joni said. "I didn't see the comeback, I admit it. But I'll say this: I know how bad she wants it. And I know what she can do."

"She did the same thing in Albuquerque," Marissa said, shrugging and grinning. "My mom . . . she gets so nervous."

Meanwhile, over on ESPN, Mechelle Voepel reaches into the domain of Cold War politics for a comparison that makes Coleman both a superhero and a freedom fighter. Reading it, one imagines Tom Cruise improbably cast in the role of Marissa Coleman in the film Voepel would make of this year's women's tournament:

It seemed like nothing short of the old Berlin Wall could have stopped [Coleman] -- and we would have given her pretty good odds of scaling that, too, on this day.

Nice try, Mechelle, but the winner of Moose's battered old Roget's Thesaurus, at least for this round, is Rick Maese of the Baltimore Sun, who reaches for the sky in a desperate bid to try to convey the scale of what Shoulders did in the last several minutes of the game:

[W]hat Coleman did Saturday afternoon is hard to quantify with numbers and difficult to capture with cameras. She could've started flapping her arms at midcourt and floated to the rafters and it would have been easier to rationalize than the closing minutes of Maryland's emotional 78-74 come-from-behind win over Vanderbilt.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SHOULDERS! Maese is so taken with his metaphor that he returns to it for the ending of his column:

After what she did Saturday, nothing she does should surprise. If she does start flapping her arms, it might be wise to look up. Coleman's capable of anything.

Dear Rick,

Love you. Mean it. You're one of our favorite sportswriters, and we give props to the Sun for its coverage of Maryland women's b-ball. Wa Po's got nothing on you in this department, despite the excellent work now being done by Camille Powell. We have great sympathy for American sportswriters, who seem doomed by the culture to interpret everything that happens through the "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" formula established decades ago by ABC's Wide World of Sports. And metaphors of flight are, of course, an apt and handy way to capture the transcendent qualities of exceptional athletic feats. In such moments, the athlete is ourselves perfected, ourselves above ourselves, soaring Icarus reaching for the sun, while we sit on the couch eating potato chips. We get it, Rick, but we still think you went a little over the top in those weird images of Marissa flapping her arms. The image is more comic than epic to us, and it captures nothing of the grace of Coleman's powerful athleticism. We think you should keep your eye a little closer to the ground as you watch the game tonight. Remember, the only birds in the house will be the Cardinals -- and we're hoping Shoulders and her pals will be feasting on them.

Yours sincerely,
Roxie

All On Her Shoulders

Shoulders: 42
Rest of Maryland Team: 36
_______________
78 = Just barely enough to move on to an Elite Eight meeting with Louisville (32-4)

We hear you, Riss. We were screaming, too. And what were we screaming? One word:

DEFENSE!!!!!!

Shoulders' ferocious determination was inspiring, even awe-inducing. Read all about it here, kids. We are still too traumatized to type, but the Cannibal Terps live to feast another day. Praise dog! Praise Shoulders! Pass the ketchup -- We've got Cardinals to eat!

(Photo Credit: Ellen Ozier, Reuters)