bed sores: the mark of a true fan

if it wasn't for sports, there would be absolutely no reason to wake up on sundays. i'm pretty good through the week when it comes to living an actual life and avoiding mutation due to television radiation, but sundays are for sports saturation and new episodes of the sopranos and that alone! this sunday had the season's first IRL race, two elite eight basketball games, the player's championship, a nascar race at bristol, and a montreal canadiens game. it was hard, but with two remotes, some tricky cable splicing, a makeshift feeding tube and a bottle for urine, i managed to watch uninterrupted sports coverage for a solid 7 hours.

it was one of those days in sports where everything happened at once, from two stories of underdogs pulling through, to a racing tragedy. the tragedy was the death of Paul Dana, a rookie IRL driver that was killed in a two-car accident during a pre-race practice session. from the interviews i saw a few years ago when he was in the infiniti series, he seemed like a very fun, interesting guy. Dana took the long road to professional indy car racing. he earned a journalism degree and began covering races ten years ago. he then took a job in canada as a mechanic, and worked his way up to crew chief before eventually getting a chance as a driver. he was impressive enough in the infiniti series to earn a spot with rahal/letterman racing in 2005. sports usually provide a sort of escape from reality, where you can forget about any stresses in your life or problems in the real world and join an audience in cheering for something as irrelevant to the big picture as a man hitting a ball with a stick. death always puts the insignificance of sports back into perspective.

the rest of the sports day tried its best to cheer us up. stephen ames, the definition of a multicultural canadian, won The Player's Championship by dominating the top golfers in the world. Ames, whose parents are British and Portuguese, lived most of his life in Trinidad and Tobago, and moved to Calgary with his wife twelve years ago. He was given Canadian citizenship over two years ago, but it was just recently that the networks started putting that little maple leaf beside his name in their graphics. i like him because he has a very self deprecating sense of humour, which is rare in professional athletes. i hope this win will make him as popular as mike weir, but i doubt it. after all, weir is friends with gretzky, and you can never out-cool that in the eyes of any canadian.

in college basketball, George Mason beat a stacked UCONN team to become the first number 11 seed to make the final four in twenty years. cinderella teams rarely make it past the elite eight, so this is especially huge for us losers that cheer exclusively for the underdog. as a sidenote, i'd like to thank the NCAA for its neverending use of alliteration, beginning with Selection Sunday, and moving through March Madness with the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four. sports journalism is truly home of the cheese, or Chewy Cheese, as they'd likely call it.

all in all, it was a well rounded day of sports. now if you'll excuse me, i have a urine bottle to empty before the sopranos starts.