Chef - NCAA tournament - house

Isaac Hayes, who played Chef on South Park, quit the show a couple days ago. He stated that he was tired of the show’s "inappropriate ridicule" of religion. Matt Stone, one of the creators of the show, countered beautifully. He pointed out that Hayes never had a problem when the show made fun of almost every other religion out there, along with gays, pedophiles, and other easy-to-ridicule groups. They recently did an episode lampooning Scientology (which if you ever read up on, you realize it is a really weird religion or group or whatever you might call it). Isaac Hayes is a Scientologist.

No matter how you slice it, this looks bad on Hayes part. It seems that he’s either bowing to pressure from the higher-ups in the church of Scientology, or he is one of the biggest hypocrites in recent memory. The term “double standard” doesn’t do the whole situation justice. “Oh yeah, mock those stupid Mormons, Christians, Jews, and whoever else you’d like. I’ll go along; I’ll collect my (probably) millions. Oh, wait. You’re going to make fun of Scientology? My religion? I have a problem with this.”

Talk about burning a bridge. While I’ll always respect him for the Shaft theme song (and Chef was a pretty funny character too), this is really a black mark on his reputation. And it might not have been, but Matt Stone went ahead and called him out on it.

I think I might get more excited about the NCAA tournament more than any other sporting event during the year. There’s just something about it. I think it’s the single-elimination aspect combined with the ever-present possibility of a big upset. Even the selection show, where you see which teams slip in and which teams get the big stiffy, is an interesting part of the process.

My favorite two days of the basketball year are tomorrow and Friday, when it’s just wall-to-wall basketball on CBS, with several games going on at once. Unfortunately, now that I have a job, it will be hard to catch the 11 AM to 5 PM shift. Back in the good ol’ days of college and high school, I could either skip class or watch it on TVs in the classrooms (if it were study hall or an especially lax teacher). And, I really don’t pay that much attention to college basketball during the year, save for K-State or what I see on Sportcenter, but when it comes to basketball in March, it just has this allure, even if I don’t really have a predilection towards one team or another.

Gretchen and I closed on a house yesterday. We are officially homeowners. This, of course, is exciting and frightening at the same time. It’s good, though, that we’ll finally be investing in something instead of just blowing money on rent. Yet, now I’m responsible for fixing stuff, mowing the lawn, and all that other business. Nothing I can’t handle, but more to handle nonetheless. Here’s a few pics.