Just making it is still making it

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In baseball the saying is, “It’ll look like a liner in the box score.”

That’s how I’m seeing my local NHL team (that would be the Washington Capitals) and its sneaky entrance into this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Caps won their last three games of the season, and I’m happy to say it wasn’t their last three games.

Just as important, these were regulation wins. Yeah, the old RW column. Who’da thunk this meaningless stat would actually play into whether or not the Caps made the playoffs? They forgot that one in Moneyball… on-base percentage, OPS+, and regulation wins.

Remember to put that one in Moneyball 2.

This is somehow worse than Sundays without football

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It’s been a minute since I’ve had a Sunday night with no episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm to look forward to.

Last night was one of those nights, and yeah, it just felt wrong.

Then again, for a little perspective (and a little math lesson), Curb Your Enthusiasm was on the air for 24 years. That’s about 1,250 Sundays.

Twelve seasons, 10 episodes each, a total of 120 episodes.

Less than 10 percent of Sundays the past 24 years have had a new episode of Curb.

Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

Curb finale was spot on

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In the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, cantankerous everyman Larry David admits that he “is 76 years old and has never learned in my entire life.”

That line, echoing the episode’s title (“No Lessons Learned”), was everyone’s takeaway Monday morning, and damn it was spot on for everything Larry, and Curb, have put forth for 25 years.

(This is Larry David, much-maligned writer of the Seinfeld finale a quarter century ago.)

I’ve been a Seinfeld finale apologist since 1998, so I don’t think Larry had any reason to say he was sorry.

And he didn’t. Because that’s Larry David.

Doubling down on the Seinfeld closer was just one more stick in the eye to world that Larry (at least the character he plays on TV) no doubt views with contempt and derision.

Watch me do this one more time.

Viewers apparently loved it, though admittedly Curb has more of a niche audience than did Seinfeld. (Let’s face it, all of TV is just more fragmented these days.)

Why did we (that is, everyone else) hate the Seinfeld finale but love Curb? Have we all become more jaded and cynical over the past quarter century?

Admittedly I have.

And Larry?

He’s exactly the same.

Amen.

After waiting so long… it’s One Shining Moment

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We’ve waited and waited, but now it’s here.

It’s time for One Shining Moment.

At approximately 3:15 p.m. today (in Northern Virginia, anyway), the celestial body we refer to as “the moon” will cross in front of the celestial body we call “the Sun” (known elsewhere as Sol), creating a shadow on Earth’s surface, simultaneously altering temperature, wind speed, humidity, etc.

Oh, did you think I was talking about basketball?

Yeah, that’s today too.

That’ll be more like midnight, when it will also be dark outside.

But in either Storrs, Connecticut, or West Lafeyette, Indiana…

Sol gonna be shinin’ bright.

Due for a double

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There has been only one school in NCAA history to win both the men’s and women’s basketball championships in the same season.

The University of Connecticut has done it twice. Once in 2004 and once in 2014.

I’d say they’re due for a double, no?

This time we planned on it

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On this coming Friday’s episode of Math and Musings you’ll hear me and Franklin talk about the “reverse jinx” and how saying that North Carolina State wouldn’t make the Final Four would actually make it come true.

Yup, worked like a charm.

You’re welcome, Wolfpack Nation. You’re welcome.

Reverse jinx was in

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Today on Math and Musings you’ll hear me and Franklin discuss the NCAA Tournament, among other things referencing my one-time home of Raleigh, North Carolina, and its North Carolina State University Wolfpack. I say I was happy they made the tournament, but am “sure they’re out of it by now” or some such thing.

Yup, we recorded the episode long ago, and this is now an outdated lie. The Wolfpack are one of 12 teams still in, still with a chance to win it all.

Call it the reverse jinx of Math and Musings.

You’re welcome, Wolfpack.

Is this it?

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If there was ever a sign, four years after it began, that the coronavirus pandemic was over, it was last week when I walked into my local Harris Teeter (ironically to get a covid booster) and saw that the bin of free cookies for kids had returned. It’s in the bakery now, not the front of the store, but still has that smiling dinosaur mascot.

Dig your germy hands in the cookie jar, kids… pandemic’s over.