If you're not already rooting for Duke (and not many are)...

... then here is your reason:

The Strength of Nolan Smith

Not one of those ridiculous, "this person overcame every challenge under the sun while everyone was doubting him/her" stories; yet, somehow, one that goes a little deeper than all of those.

Definitely worth the read.

The Mixed Sixer (Part 1)

It’s been too long.

It always seems like it’s been too long. Too long since there have been regular posts in this space.

So, rather than a traditional post, what you’re about to read is a collection of things that have been on our minds lately here at the Lager, but we just never got around to posting about.

So, without further ado, The Lager presents the first installment of our new weekly series, The Mixed Sixer! So grab yourself an opener, kick back, and enjoy!

UPDATE: I GOT ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH THE MIXED SIXER AND REALIZED I WAS ALREADY AT THE 1,200 WORD MARK. SINCE I’M NOT GOING TO SUBJECT YOU ALL TO A 2,400 WORD, SIMMONS-ESQUE DIATRIBE, THE SECOND HALF OF THE MIXED SIXER WILL BE POSTED ON THURSDAY OF THIS WEEK.

Sampling No. 1 – “I am no scientist, but... Porter”

            So, I was reading this Reuters article on Yahoo! News the other day – I know, I know, Yahoo! News?!? Look, it was sent to me by a friend.

Anyway, it was discussing the Large Hadron Collider on the French/Swiss border just outside of Geneva and how the scientists working on the project are hoping to discover Dark Matter during their experiments later this month – experiments which will feature the highest energy particle collisions ever achieved in such a setting.

(The article erroneously states the collisions will be “at the highest energy ever achieved,” without adding the clarifier “in a lab,” or something of that ilk. Might just be me, but I’m pretty sure these collisions have been achieved before. Maybe during the Big Bang, you know, if you subscribe to that theory. But I digress.)

First things first: did we learn nothing from Star Trek? Dark Matter = unstable world destroyer. Do we really want to be manufacturing the stuff in some underground lab on the Swiss/French border?

If it means France gets sucked into a black hole, never to return… then yes.

But in all seriousness, I get fairly nervous when I hear about physicists conducting these types of experiments. Physicists are crazy. Don’t think so? Well, how about we examine a quote from the guy in charge of the Collider project then, Dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer.

In the article, in a section discussing the researchers’ hope to replicate the Higgs boson – which, as far as I can tell, is the new “politically correct” name for what I have always heard referred to as “the God Particle” – Heuer is quoted as saying:

"We know everything about this particle. The only thing we don't know is if it exists."

Excuse me?!?

So, what Dieter is telling us, essentially, is that he and his fellow scientists understand all of the many intricacies concerning an imaginary particle that they made up. Well, I should hope so!

How can you possibly know “everything” about anything if you cannot first verify whether or not that thing EVEN EXISTS!!!

Maybe this is why I cannot be a scientist. Or, maybe this is why our friend Dieter should not be a scientist. I’ll leave that call up to you, the reader.

Sampling No. 2 – “Winter White Ale”

            Why is Shaun White’s publicity team trying to make people hate him?

Here’s what I learned about Shaun during the Vancouver Games this February:

Shaun White is an absolutely incredible athlete who can do things in his sport that no one has ever dreamed of, let alone had the balls to risk life and limb trying.

He’s also bright, witty and, most importantly, humble, and all my previous animosity toward him was completely unwarranted and simply based on the fact that he was highly successful at an extremely young age and came off as, likely just because of the long red hair and the fact that he participates in the X Games, a punk.

How did I learn this?

Through watching his many interviews with Bob Costas, Stephen Colbert, or whoever he happened to be talking to on whichever particular night.

Through watching his reaction at the top of the pipe after learning that his first run’s score was good for gold, and then hearing him state his desire to ride down the middle of the pipe on his just-for-show second run with his arms up rather than showboat with an unnecessary second run of monster tricks (though, I’m glad his coach convinced him otherwise after seeing the ridiculous corked-alley-mctwist-10,000 or whatever it is you want to call what he did at the bottom of that pipe – I’ll stick with “Unbelievable”).

In fact, after the Vancouver Games yours truly became like a prophet, spreading the good word to all the Shaun White haters who still assumed he was a punk because they had missed all of what I saw during the Olympics – choosing to change the channel anytime Shaun came on, because like me once, they had an unwarranted bias against him.

And then I saw the latest Rolling Stone cover.

Which jackass on his staff allowed Shaun to go shirtless, wearing a pair of blue jeans apparently made out of the American flag, while lighting a snowboard on fire and giving the Devil’s horns, on the cover of Rolling Stone? I get that it’s “Rolling Stone” – the desperately-trying-to-still-be-edgy-even-though-we’re-mainstream-pop magazine – but c’mon!!! This guy just gained a whole mess of fans in Vancouver because he showed us he was not, in fact, a cocky, redheaded, punk, and the first thing you let him do after the games is dress up like a cocky, redheaded, punk on the cover of a major magazine?

Shaun, take my advice; gather all the people responsible for the upkeep and marketing of The Shaun White brand into one big room… and fire all their asses. Then go find yourself the people who made Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods – who are by many accounts two of the cockiest, most egotistical, punks to have ever played their respective sports – into family friendly household names. And hire them.

Trust me on this one.

Sampling No. 3 – “The best day of the year Bock”

            I feel bad for people who live in climates where it’s warm year round.

San Diego, Miami, Phoenix… residents of warm-weather cities will never have the delight of experiencing true happiness. They’ll never know pure ecstasy; real, honest-to-goodness, uncontrollable joy.

People who live in Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, New York and Cleveland are nodding right now, because they know exactly what I’m talking about.

This feeling only comes once a year, usually sometime in mid-March or early April, manifesting on the first 50+ degree day of the spring.

Bill Simmons has written about this before – he calls it “Halter-top Day”, named for the young women who can be seen walking around any cold-weather city or town wearing semi-revealing blouses for the first time since late September. It’s a phenomenon that can only take place in cold-weather climates, and it just so happened to take place here in Boston this past weekend.

Literally anything can happen to me on the first warm, sunny day of the spring, and it’s just not going to phase me. Girlfriend or wife leaves me for another guy? Big deal. Dog dies? No problem. Car breaks down? I wanted to walk anyway. Pats, Celts, Sox and Bruins all decide to pack it in and move to either New York City or L.A.? Good riddance.

Nothing can shake me out of my good mood on the best day of the year. Why? Because I can roll down my car windows again while I’m driving and pump up my stereo.

Because when I jump up to go outside and get the paper in the morning, I can toss on my old Foo Fighters t-shirt instead of a thermal, down-feather, 178-pound, Gortex jacket.

Because for the first time since the previous October I can feel the warmth of the sun beaming down onto my pale, sun-starved skin.

Nope. Nothing can put me into a bad mood on that day, no matter how horrendous said thing may be. And that feeling doesn’t happen without the preceding four to five months of sunless, cold, wet, grey, snowy hell.

So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it San Diego.

………………… more to come on Thursday.