the story

Previously: The Story 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008.

The internet (and probably some sacred documents) say that the Buddha found enlightenment after sitting under a Banyan tree for seven days. Cool! Way to go, Buddha. Ever try some goalposts?

om [Fuller]

I cannot exactly elucidate why these images have burned themselves into my head, and the heads of many Michigan fans. Maybe it's that the happy-go-lucky McCarthy seems like a breath of fresh air to a Michigan fanbase that was, until recently, beset by woe. Maybe it's just nice to have a guy who's a little different because it makes things more interesting. Maybe, I dunno, it's a different mode of leadership fit for the 24th century:

On J.J. McCarthy’s leadership:

It’s vibrant. It’s infectious; it rubs off on everybody.

Last summer, we took a team trip around Michigan and we got into this wiffle ball game. My kids were playing — a bunch of nine-year-olds, some of Jack's friends. And you couldn’t tell who the nine-year-olds were and who the 18-year-olds were. He's running, he's diving, he’s sliding. One ball gets hit out into the street and he's running out, doesn't even look. Dove into first base one time and barely missed this tree that was planted and had the bricks around it. He missed it by that much.

He's got the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old guy. It’s a beautiful thing. It's that vibrant, it's that infectious and it rubs off on the team.

Maybe next time demand McCarthy wears pads, but… maybe not. In fact, let's not.

I know what it is now.

[After THE JUMP: what it is]

Previously: The Story 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008.

4/31/2022 – Independiente De Medellin 0, Atletico National 0

He introduces himself as "Davey." He's wearing a hat that says DO IT IN A VAN, mysteriously, and the first thing he says is that he is very sorry but he is still drunk from last night because it was an American friend's last night in the country. Then he says his girlfriend is going to drive us, and that his girlfriend is not very happy with him. Then he apologizes again because he does not know that these are the three best facts I can learn about the guide of a food tour I'm going on. Tranquilo.

It is immediately apparent that Davey doesn't know anything about food, but this is fine. He says he speaks three languages, "Spanish, English, and bullshit." He takes us to Medellin's main market, where men you must avoid arm-wresting at all costs lug a seemingly infinite variety of products, mostly fruits. Many of these fruits are strange to gringo eyes, and Davey wanders through the market asking for various items and a knife so he can cut them and hand them to us.

These fruits are… unrefined. When you go to an American megamart the things that line the shelves have been relentlessly iterated to strip out things which interfere with the flavor. The Colombian oddities have not gone through this process and can be eye-wateringly tart or mostly seeds or one giant pit with a thin layer of fruit-type substance around it. The usual thing to do is to rhapsodize about the pure untrammeled authenticity of such things, but they're not actually better. We're sampling a smoothie-type thing made from a hard, luridly orangish fruit; Davey's girlfriend questions us about whether we like it, in the way of people who are almost but not quite mutually unintelligible. She makes a face and a sort of money gesture with her hands—she doesn't like the texture. She has a point.

Davey suggests that about half the things he hands to me are aphrodisiacs. He uses his arm to demonstrate their purported effects. He flops his forearm down from the elbow and looks at me, cocking an eyebrow. I nod. There doesn't seem to be anything else I can do.

Previously: The Story 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008.

Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl, Broken Social Scene

HELLO.

Hey. This is about us. It's not about anything else, even Michigan football. If you care that this post is here on this date, I'm talking to you. Here is what I am saying: I can't do it. I can do some of it. Just not all of it, anymore.

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Here's a thing that happened. I went to see a movie.

The Michigan Theater has been scrapping for things to show in the (sort-of) aftermath of COVID; one of the things they struck on was a series of Studio Ghibli films. If you're vaguely familiar, you're probably familiar with My Neighbor Totoro, a movie in which a couple of young girls run across a series of increasingly large and sleepy rabbit spirits. There's also a catbus?

If you are more than vaguely familiar you probably know all about Studio Ghibli and would like to disclaim to me at length about it; let's take a raincheck.

Anyway, My Neighbor Totoro is sweetness and light. When the Michigan fanbase collectively beat Spencer Hall into getting a Michigan themed tattoo he went with a block-M emblazoned Totoro, because spirit animal recognize spirit animal. It is a movie where a young girl gets lost and a young girl gets found. If you had to summarize this movie in one word it would be "sproing!"

[after THE JUMP: the other movie]