I wish I'd been there.






It was poetry.

Purity.

Next week, it's personal.



The icing on the cake? I placed in our year-anniversary all-day poker game. The instant yesterday's UNC tourney coincided with our poker tourney, I chalked up my $40 buy-in to karma. Not only did I survive the basketball game, I came in fourth out of twenty players to net $40 on the day! And I did it on approximately 8.5 beers and two spiked lemonades, since Nameless generously picked me up.

If that's not the Perfect Fucking Sunday (PFS), I don't know what is.

It's a week of Alma Mater nostalgia for all of us, not just JT, JR. and co.

Take today - you had Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley sign that peace accord.

Adams visited Gaston Hall freshman year. There's my future apartment-mate Robert, aka "Rowbuht" - this scrawny Brit. Well he must have been high because 110-pound Rowbuht decides he can take Adams, so he gets up to the mic during Q&A and starts dueling with the leader of the political wing of the Irish Republican Fucking Army. Of course, Adams shoots him down - metaphorically speaking - amid bursts of applause from the audience.

(Some remark about, "I remember another nation 200 years ago that didn't want to be taxed without representation," in one of those really thick weird Irish accents.)

Adams stayed at the Dubliner, right down the street from the Irish Times near Capitol Hill, where back in the day you could get in with a pretty good fake.

Last week, when I ventured to a God's Country West bar to watch the Hoyas play our Cocky Jesuit Rivals to the North among the Brethren, I didn't recognize a single face in the room.

I sat down next to an alum born in India, raised in America, and clearly ten times smarter than I. During the game he's also checking World Series of Cricket scores in the Caribbean on his crackberry. (pre-shocking strangulation of the Pakistan coach.) He'd be heading there in a couple of days. Someone else might find this disloyal to the Hoyas - not devoting his full attention to the task at hand.

I loved it - it's those small details about the Hilltop that are to be relished during this amazing week.

I am back in front of McDonough Gym, practicing my perimeter shot. Ten years later, Patrick Ewing, Jr. will walk across that lot, grinning like his father, holding up those nets. God exists.