Dear Diary is Bundled With Half-Life Comment Count

Seth

Quick reminder: you've got one week to get it at the lowest price ----------------------->
so if you were waiting to get 13 more for grandma, better act fast.

Burkesportal

So in preparation for Brian to be laid up on a cocktail of drugs they won't let you take while operating devices with internet connections, we underlings were fully prepared for one of those M.A.S.H. episodes when Colonel Blake has to leave the base and Hawkeye and Trapper hire a circus or something. Alas before Ace and I could declare ourselves the Pros from Dover and infiltrate the alumni golf game Brian turned out to be mostly lucid, meaning we now have loads of weird unpublished things taking up space in the hopper.

Here's one of those on Burke's return, which if you're old/young enough to get the phrase "The Cake is a Lie!" you'll get it; if you don't, don't bother.

A one-man advantage. If you like hockey and/or wanted to know what was up with Michigan's power play, I mean like 1265151422-slap_shotreally wanna know, your Diarist of the Week is JeepinBen for the first two parts of a three-part series on special teams strategy. Part the 1st, which got the bump, covered the basics and Part II got into penalty killing and controlling the neutral zone. Sample:

The powerplay is a lot like football plays – constraints are huge

This will come into view with the “Penalty Kill” diary, but depending on what the offense is doing, the defense does something and vice versa. There are ways to break kills, kills designed to stop specific powerplays, etc.

Learn what you were actually doing when you selected "umbrella or something" in NHL '99, and you too will be able to offer intelligent criticism when Michigan uses 25 minutes of man advantage in an elimination game to stand around with the puck. Not sold yet? There's Slapshots clips in those links.

Stray thought re Slapshots clips: Do you think Valeri Bure used to skate behind guys' nets and exclaim "I'm doing D.J. Tanner!" because that would totally screw with pretty much every guy in my generation.

Spring's springing. We have this one week to sample this year's line of football. It's not a real game so there won't be predictions and MonuMental backgrounds for this one coming, but Lanyard Program came out with one of his programs. The part that is totally real is the lacrosse game immediately after the fake football: Michigan will finally face Ohio's state university letterman to letterman. MaizeAndBlueWahoo, our resident LAX man, got his lacrosse primer bumped.

HokeIsComing

Winter's coming. By which we mean the cessation of football hostilities and many peaceful months pockmarked by commitments before fall football begins and the wars resume. User Silly Goose compares various programs to Game of Thrones houses. When describing Michigan as the Starks he left out the part about how we chop off the heads of deserters, which teaches us important moral lessons about leadership. And instead of all of the houses battling it out in a single playoff they decide things by getting into ill-defined wars between each other. The allegories fit pretty strongly, which probably says something Campbellian about ascribing character archetypes to sports rivals (if you make this your essay for Rabkin's class I wanna see it!). Blazefire seems to think when winter comes it will be zombies from Ohio THE Stadium.

Etc. Ace's weekly rankings. The Gedeon announcement will bump next week's but if you want to get a jump now to see Midwest power programs filling up—not like 16 commits in April filling up, but 7 to 10 each—it's here. Tennis wins. Blockhams are reliving the best 1:17 of their lives.

#Best of the Board

OHIO WANT IT THEN THEY SHOULDA PUT A RING ON IT

Oh no did Jared Sullinger just pose in drag in front of a light, easily crop-able background? Photoshoppers, start your graphics engines:

shouldawonaringwithit_thumb

The more I learn about the methods people were using to lure Trey Burke to the NBA…

NOTRE DAME IS QUARTERBACKLESS, USING A RECEIVER AS THEIR HB, HAD ONE OF THEIR BEST PLAYERS RECENTLY RETURN FROM A VISION QUEST, AND OF COURSE ARE GOING TO WIN A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP BECAUSE IT'S NOTRE DAME.

Those are the key points from hart20 on the state of things in the town under our state.

#HASHTAGS CREATE BUSINESS SYNERGY

This doesn't have anything to do with anything but this blog by friend of MGoUser antoo had six rounds of ideas for hashtags Dave Brandon should copyright in order to better use technology as a competitive advantage to engage and connect to fans who use hashtags.

HE'S GOING TO EASTERN MICHIGAN!

thumbnail.xlarge.1.1307107840.pick-a-little-talk-a-little-ladiesmusicman_6442

The moderator sticky is a serious place where the moderators and editors and other site personnel solemnly explain why your post was deleted, your points were docked, and your avatar is suddenly a pretty pink pony. We take this very seriously and are totally not making fun of you in there.

Comments

ChopBlock

April 13th, 2012 at 8:33 AM ^

That's gotta be the first time the Mod Action thread has ever been featured in Dear Diary

Also, the "Mod Action" thread sounds like something that would probably be axed by the MGoBewbz policy

Tim

April 13th, 2012 at 9:22 AM ^

Lacrosse, when abbreviated, is never capitalized. LAX is an airport. 

Lax is a slang term for lacrosse, but even that should be relegated to the 14-year olds who are more concerned with their sick flow and whatnot than the actual sport.

Two Hearted Ale

April 13th, 2012 at 9:23 AM ^

For those whom are hesitent to back HTTV because they don't want to give their credit card number to a new website or go through the trouble of signing up go back the magazine now. You can sign in with Facebook and pay with your Amazon account. It takes about 30 seconds.

JeepinBen

April 13th, 2012 at 9:33 AM ^

And I guess the title is "Slap Shot" I had it wrong too. I'd bet that anyone with the name "Hanrahan" doesn't love the film though.

I've been thinking of changing what Part 3 in the series is. I've been asked to do another basic hockey diary with things like "how do you set your lines?" "what's basic offensive strategy" and things in it, and I'll probably write that this weekend.

A question for the board/Mods/Brian is do we really need a Michigan Specific diary? Pretty much all of michigan's struggles have come to light in the comments of both diaries. Both personnel decisions and where they struggle. Your thoughts?

YoungGeezy

April 13th, 2012 at 10:10 AM ^

It's incredible what a difference a week makes. A week ago, when it looked like Trey was gone, some writers regarded MBB as a middle-of-the-Big Ten team that could miss the Tournament. With TB3 back, ESPN and CBS Sports both slate us as a Top 5 team.

Although I'm one of those negative nancy Michigan fans that expects us to fail whenever we have high expectations, its pretty awesome to see us getting the love — especially when you look at what could have been with Spike Lee running the point.

Seth

April 13th, 2012 at 1:36 PM ^

Every Holloween-ish they have a few nights of Rocky Horror at the State Theater on State Street. A few times I managed to get a window seat at Ashley's to watch the action. Highly recommended entertainmnet!

Do I really gotta say NTTAWWT for a college kid putting on a dress one time? I figured it for a given that Ohio State's star forward posing for this and the internet's natural response to such thing is just good entertainment, not "omigod he's..." Nothing about that photo says anything but that it's an athlete in a cocktail dress--any teenage dude who hangs around enough women--not counting people who belong to groups with specific qualms about these things--will eventually be photographed in at least a boa or something. From personal experience, being fat and having a beard does a good job of ruining the effect enough to dampen distribution.

DD is the not-as-serious link post and tries to bring some of the board's ethos and pathos to the front page. I believe in the no-politics rules and this kind of thing can very easily slip past the line of sports discussion to where peoples' triggers are set off, but one day perhaps I'll be able to make an exception so I can say some things in a Museday column about actual gays in major sports, because I do have very strong feelings about that which I think oughtta be expressed by more sportswriters than just LZ Granderson.

ijohnb

April 13th, 2012 at 11:29 AM ^

beheading of the deserter was possibly less justifying than his own beheading.  I am beginning to believe that the illusion of the Starks' nobility was only that, an illussion, brought about heavily by the shows almost complete adherence to the Stark point of view in season 1.  Uh...... but really I am not addicted to that show, promise. 

I Bleed Maize N Blue

April 13th, 2012 at 2:11 PM ^

Desertion from the Black Watch is punishable by death.  A coerced confession that one is a traitor, not so much.  The realm would have been better served by letting Ned take the black and avoiding a war.  But that story wouldn't have been as interesting.

And Joffrey is a little POS.

Seth

April 13th, 2012 at 1:56 PM ^

I was only taking it as far as metaphor, because Brian's leadership style is very Col. Blake, and we had a carnival planned for his absence until he came back from Tokyo early.

As an analogy though it falls apart way before we get to supporting characters. We have no Hot Lips, and no Major Burns.

Plus when the M.A.S.H. cast turned over there was always an almost direct replacement: Sherman Potter for Henry Blake, BJ Hunnicutt for Trapper John. When TomVH and Tim Sullivan left their duties were broken up and reorganized based on what people could do: Ace got the bulk of both of their jobs, including Tom and Tim's recruiting and hoops arenas. Heiko took over the press conferences that Tim used to do, and added his own extra content. And I took over the business stuff from TomVH while remaining front page copyeditor and splitting what used to be a really long Dear Diary column (which I stole from Tim when I came on as paid staff) into DD and Museday.

Undefeated dre…

April 13th, 2012 at 2:11 PM ^

I sent a note about this to Brian, but I was shocked SHOCKED to find that he hasn't read the series. I assume because he's wrapped up in Reamde or something. This is more for those who've read the books vs. watching the series, because with the show we've barely seen Stannis.

I humbly submit that Mark Dantonio is the living embodiment of Stannis Baratheon. Younger brother, tormented at the excess and waste of his big brother's reign. Gaunt, taciturn, bitter, grim, with no patience for nuance and a belief in moral absolutism (and his responsibility to be judge and jury for his people). Not without skills, yet he can't gain complete victory or win the love of his people.