❖ The Brannan Blog

When people start complaining about how unwatchable basketball is these days, direct them to this video from the 1940 Final Four. Those dudes were awful.

If you think I have some thoughts, you thought right. I think.

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A quick update on local basketball.

First off, EHS fell one game short of taking their first regional title in 59 years. They won their Saturday morning contest in overtime,* their third straight one-point win, but dropped the championship game by 12 points. Still, a great year for a school that hadn’t had a winning record in ten years. They return almost their entire team, so I’m looking forward to following them again next year.

* Regionals are single-day events. Four teams play semi finals in the morning/early afternoon, then the winners return for the championship game that evening. Believe it or not, I was not a big basketball fan growing up. Baseball was always my favorite sport to play and I just played basketball to do something in the winter. But I always liked single day tournaments. I remember once we had to play four games in a day. Love the fact Indiana still uses the single-day format for two rounds of the state playoffs.

Returning to last week’s game, as I mentioned in my account there was a racial element to the wild finish to the sectional championship game. The losers, IHS, petitioned the state high school athletics association to move them to a different sectional next year. They claimed their players were subjected to racial taunts by the EHS crowd on Saturday. The official responsible for setting sectional match ups quickly shot the request down, noting that the IHS players instigated whatever interactions there were with the crowd and that they made no complaints about racial comments during the game.

I don’t know what was and was not said. The key encounter took place across the court from me in a very loud gym. I would not be surprised if someone in the crowd said something inappropriate. But, the IHS players never reacted as if they had heard any of the magic words from the crowd. They were far more upset with the referees than the crowd. It was only after the final technical foul that people on the bench began pointing at the crowd. The players on the court never grabbed the officials and pointed out people in the stands. Not that that means nothing was said; it just seems to me that if magic bombs were dropped, there would have been an immediate and obvious reaction from the players.

Also, and this means nothing at all, there were exactly two African Americans in the EHS crowd, and both were sitting in the area where the confrontation took place. Seems unlikely that any of the other fans would be dropping racial bombs with black folks sitting right next to them. Then again, maybe it was the black EHS fans who were heckling the IHS players. That would be ironic.

Whatever, it will make for an interesting rematch next year of the two teams meet in sectionals again.

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I’m very excited that Frightened Rabbit, the magnificent band that blew me away with their 2008 release The Midnight Organ Fight, released their new album this week. A full review will come soon, but in the meantime, here’s one of the many fine songs off the new disk, The Winter of Mixed Drinks.

Periodically we buy the girls spiral notebooks to use however they see fit. Most of the time they turn into sources for paper when they want to draw and color. But, as Meghan learns to read and write, hers has taken on a new use: her first diary.

While she was insistent at first that we were not to read her diary, since she’s broadcast every entry to the entire family I feel comfortable sharing some of my favorite entries here. So, with some of her spelling errors,* here they are.

* Unfortunately I can’t do the backwards or misshapen letters.

Dear Diary, Cait kicked me.

Her first, and my favorite, entry. What better use for a diary than to complain about a sibling?

Dear Diary, I wont to go to floota (Florida)

We’re considering a beach vacation sometime in the next year. I think she’s made her vote on destination.

Dear Diary, I have a new ring with lipstic in sid the ring

Dear Diary, Doo you like me

We think this one is especially cute.

Dear Diary, Dade gave me a weird look like this

Below she drew a rather demonic looking picture of me. I did give her a weird look, but I don’t remember growing horns.

Dear Diary, Mom gave me a werd look

The picture of Suzanne just has her with a sad face. No horns.

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