Lang’s World: Ten Pearls of Whitaker’s wit and wisdom on sports and beyond 3.15.18

I was preparing dinner Sunday night, when I realized the clock -- newly set-forward! -- had ticked past 5:00 p.m., which meant the NCAA Tournament Selection Show was airing on TBS. Which also meant that within minutes, my phone started blowing up with requests to join about a dozen different bracket pools.

For many people, March Madness is the most wonderful time of the year. Clearly, there are very many people for whom bracketology is sacred, their chance to flex the knowledge they’ve accumulated from consuming college basketball games over the past six months. Even if you haven’t watched college hoops all season, you can always fill out a bracket and hope for the best!

And then when the games actually start, you have to make sure you have your sheet of paper handy so you know which teams you are supposed to root for while you try to figure out which channel is TruTV.

Unless you, like me, refuse to fill out a bracket.

For about five years now, I celebrated the tip-off of the NCAA Tournament by tossing my unfilled bracket into the trash can and, you know, actually watching the games.

I have watched a combined total of about two college games this season. I used to love college basketball. I grew up in Atlanta in the ‘80s, and I went to dozens of Georgia Tech games to see everyone from Mark Price to Kenny Anderson to Travis Best to Stephon Marbury. (Years later, it was wonderfully surreal to eventually end up working alongside Tech three-point gawd Dennis Scott.)

But as someone who does not watch much college basketball during the regular season, I view the NCAA Tournament as something like a crash course in college hoops. I don’t know what a KenPom or an RPI is, but I can watch any one game and tell whether a highly hyped center has a motor or if a guard understands how to navigate a pick. Because I don’t have any skin in the games, I can root for anyone I feel like without worrying about messing up my bracket.

I do not think any less of you if you do fill out a bracket. I understand it can be fun to try and predict the future, especially when there may or may not be a cash prize at stake. And surely it always feels affirming to win any sort of contest. So if you want to go bracketeering, please do. Just realize you would probably do just as well to pick your team based on completely random criteria, such as how good the school’s football team is.

There are certain truisms about the NCAA Tournament that are universal and will never change: One of the 5 seeds will probably lose to a 12 seed; it’s not crunch time until one of the coaches calls a timeout right in the middle of a play; “One Shining Moment” should only ever be the Luther Vandross version.

But keeping track of 64 (wait, is it 68 now?) teams for six months just so I can lose a tournament to my friend’s nine-year-old is exactly my idea of madness.

In case you missed it, on Tuesday we had the NBA 2K League Draft Lottery, and our team, Grizz Gaming, was the third ping pong ball out of the hopper in descending order, which means we will draft 15th in the first round out of 17 teams. Which is just about where I was hoping we would land. You can read all about that and more here.

The good news is that Amazon has apparently figured out a way to fix their Alexa devices, some of which have begun emitting an unprompted “creepy laugh” in people’s homes.

The bad news is that some of Amazon’s Alexa devices have started emitting an UNPROMPTED CREEPY LAUGH IN PEOPLE’S HOMES.

Which totally isn’t weird at all! Wait, it’s really weird, isn’t it? To be honest, to me it’s not so much the laugh that is creepy as it is that the device is just doing stuff on its own.

I suppose these devices can make your life easier in some ways. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to manually use my phone to play music and look up arcane facts, without relying on a hands-free device that is potentially listening to everything my family says or does.

But maybe that’s just me.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about my future presidential platform and my plan to get rid of Daylight Savings Time once and for all. Well, it appears my platform would be wildly popular in the state of Florida -- which as we all know would be an important voting bloc in my nascent political career -- because local politicians are introducing legislature to get the state to opt-out of having to turn their clocks forward and back throughout the year.

For all the weird news that comes out of Florida, I’m glad to finally see something logical and sensible. It’s particularly relevant this week, as we all just pushed our clocks forward last weekend, and all of a sudden it’s like we’re living on a totally different planet. I recently found myself staring out my back windows the other day at 6:30 p.m., amazed at what it was like to be able to actually see stuff at that hour. Why would anyone not want to enjoy more daylight?

The story I found myself thinking about all week was this one from The Atlantic about a con man who took advantage of not one, not two, not a dozen, but a seemingly endless string of women who were looking for someone to believe in. And he left a long trail of financial and emotional destruction in his wake. This is a fascinating read.

These days, you can buy potato chips in a wide variety of flavors, from prime rib to dill pickle to even mozzarella and marinara. But when I was a kid, it was a big deal when Ruffles dropped “Cajun Spice” flavored chips. And I vividly remember this commercial starring The Cajun Chef himself, Justin Wilson, who spoke a language that was unlike anything I’d ever heard.

Those Cajun chips really were on point, though. I guar-on-tee!

Now here is an epic life hack that I fully intend to steal and customize. In this video, a man named Chris Ng gets up into the guts of his Volvo and replaces the door chime with something that is much more fun: Toto’s “Africa.”

I’m guessing this may be harder to hack in newer cars that have what are basically full-on computers in there. But if you get into my car one day and hear that the door chime has been replaced by “Bombs Over Baghdad,” don’t be surprised.

The LeBron 15s were one of my favorite shoe releases of the last year. Not only did they look sleek and futuristic, but like all the shoes in the LeBron line they were supportive and solid, without being bulky.

I say all that in the past tense because after about six months of wearing my 15s, I was recently wearing them one Sunday when we stopped off at a local park. It had rained the night before, and suddenly I found myself in a muddy field and then, well…

Now that I’m in the market for a new pair, I think I’m more ready for the LeBron 15 Lows which look pretty great. They manage to retain the look and feel of the high-tops but will undoubtedly be less bulky. Plus, I’m always a sucker for a gum sole.

If you go kayaking in Florida, best keep your head on a swivel, because some otters have gone wild! That’s right, a woman was out for a nice and quiet ride on her kayak, when all of a sudden her life flashed before her eyes. Let’s let her explain: “"I thought ‘Oh this is a cute otter,’ and all of the sudden he jumped on the back of the kayak and lunged at me. Then we had this little tug of war, I tried to get him off of my kayak and I screamed extremely loud so I could try and scare him off but that didn’t work. It took some time, but I fought with him, my husband jumped in and other people came by to help."

Nobody knows when or where it’s going to happen, but always remember: One of these days, the animal takeover is coming.

The other day, I found myself having to explain to my five-year-old son the difference between Memphis Grizzlies forward JaMychal Green and soul legend (and Memphis native) Reverend Al Green. So here’s half an hour of the Reverend’s greatest hits to get you through your day…

The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Memphis Grizzlies. All opinions expressed by Lang Whitaker are solely his own and do not reflect the opinions of the Memphis Grizzlies or its Basketball Operations staff, owners, parent companies, partners or sponsors. His sources are not known to the Memphis Grizzlies and he has no special access to information beyond the access and privileges that go along with being an NBA accredited member of the media.