Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket: Final Four and Championship

#10 Xavier Musketeers vs. #10 Virginia Cavaliers

Oh damn,  you guys. Not only do we finally have two human mascots going up against one another, and not only are they both at least presumed to have some sort of elite military training, but they both represent very specific factions serving close to their king at the same point in history. Roughly!

The Musketeers of the Guard (Mousquetaires de la garde!) were formed under Louis XIII in 1622 and spent most of their time protecting nobles, shooting things (nominally in the name of protecting nobles, but I’m sure that there was a 17^th century French equivalent of canned goods on a fence at some point) and waiting around for Alexandre Dumas to be born so that their story could eventually be romanticized, and then summarized by Wishbone.

Caution: If you actually ask Wishbone “What’s the story?”, he will cut you.

The Cavaliers, on the other hand were the loyalist component of the English Civil War, starting in 1642 and hung around through Oliver Cromwell’s rule and the Restoration of the Monarchy. They both had their own military problems to be concerned with (the Musketeers with trying to make sure the Huguenots didn’t kill the king; the Cavaliers fighting a civil war), so it’s difficult to say how they’d have done actually fighting each other. The Musketeers lose on numbers, but win on fancy hats and keeping kings alive (Louis XIII died of tuberculosis, and Louis XIV was a king for longer than anyone’s ever been a king in Europe). The Cavaliers had that period where the kings they supported were executed, but did mount a come-from-behind victory in that the Monarchy did show back up again.

I’d say this comes down to overwhelming force against a smaller, though better trained opponent, but honestly I keep reading “Musketeer” as “Mouseketeer” and I’m not going to make it to the end of this post if that keeps happening. So overwhelming force takes it.

Virginia advances.

#13 Montana grizzlies vs. #15 Detroit Titans

The Grizzlies have gotten here mostly by virtue of being 700 pounds and having razor sharp claws and murder in their hearts, along with a little help from the fact that Monte the Grizzly in particular rides a motorcycle and wears a bandana and is probably eventually going to be the subject of a critically well-received drama on FX. There’s a problem that comes up when your main advantage is size, though, and that’s when your opponent is something that serves as the base of synonyms for “really, really big”. 

 Oh dear.

The grizzlies have the advantage over most mortal things that aren’t several hundred pounds, but the Titans don’t exactly go down easily. Hell, it apparently takes a whole new set of gods to come in, which only really serves to imprison the Titans, and even then, you’ve got myths wherein Zeus overthrows Cronus by getting him drunk and putting him in a cave.

There’s simply no way a grizzly bear is walking out of that alive.

Detroit advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket Championship

#10 Virginia Cavaliers vs. #15 Detroit Titans

 So we've established that the Titans are somewhere between a ridiculous man with a ridiculous smile in ridiculous armor and powerful (though explicitly not omnipotent) deities. The Cavaliers had, well, horses. And swords. And their own creepy smile. And a reputation for drinking and carousing and having plumed hats, which I sympathize with. Basically all they've got on the Titans is that the Cavaliers existed, whereas the Titans didn't, except as a moon of Saturn (or moons, if we're counting things named after individual Titans as part of that set).

Even there, we're conflicted. Titan's got an atmosphere, but it's got sort of a yellow haze to it. There are oceans, but they're made of methane. There might be microbial life, but that's not terribly threatening unless we're going to give the Cavalier some sort of terrible infection. 

And while, as I mentioned, the Titans are powerful, they also have a history of failing pretty hard. I'm not sure whether the Cavaliers have Zeus' contact information, or if they've got the ability to summon an iceberg, but it's not as though the Titans are unstoppable. It's merely really hard.

What it really comes down to is the interaction between a guy with a horse, a sword, and a rifle and a Titan with a tendency to be overthrown. I'm not finding a lot about human-Titan interactions in myth, and the Titan that keeps popping up is Prometheus, who would probably have just handed the victory to the Cavalier and then gotten tortured for it. 

 Honestly, I think that's it. I'm going to say that Tommy Titan is merciful toward CavMan and allows him the victory, based solely on his humanity and his facial hair. Tommy Titan will be OK. Clint Eastwood will make a commercial for him.

This may have been unduly influenced by hat plumage.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Champion

 

The Virginia Cavaliers.

 

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket - West, Round One, Part One

Quick note: The remaining first round sets will be split to avoid ludicrously long posts. And so I can sleep.

#1 Michigan State Spartans vs. #16 LIU Blackbirds
I think I’ve gotten to the point where I can hear “Spartan” and not have Gerard Butler be the only thing that comes to mind. I think that’s probably the romantic comedies at work; my Peloponnesian history isn’t what it should be, so I don’t know exactly how ancient Spartans would have responded to The Bounty Hunter, but I have to assume it wouldn’t have been pretty.

Spartan McNulty is displeased.

The Blackbirds, on the other hand, probably aren’t going to fare well against a guy with a sword wearing a cuirass. They’re fine as something for Paul McCartney to sing about, and seem to be pretty good at pestering Jon Snow for corn, but against an actual military unit, I’m afraid that the birds aren’t going to fare well.


Yes, I’m sorry. It’s ok. You can be even more dour now.


Michigan State advances.

#8 Memphis Tigers vs. #9 Saint Louis Billikens





So that’s a Billiken, then. I was really worried that I was missing something really basic about what in the world this is supposed to be, but Introduction to Charm Doll Fads of the Early 1900s That Appeared In the Dreams of an Art Teacher wasn’t required for my major, so it’s an area in which I know I’m deficient. It’s evidently a good luck… thing, which is good as something tells me that if the Billiken deems it, things can go south in a hurry. Then suddenly the Brady Bunch has to go back to St. Louis to return the Billiken because Bobby can’t leave well enough alone and it turns into a weird parable about how we have to care for and preserve St. Louis.

The Tigers are Tigers, I guess, but for some reason I assume the Billiken’s got anti-Tiger powers. Which would actually explain the 2006 World Series, so let’s run with that.

Saint Louis advances.

#5 New Mexico Lobos vs. #12 Long Beach State 49ers

We could sit here and debate the positives and the negatives of the California Gold Rush, but we won’t, because I don’t feel like reading enough about it to have a strong opinion one way or the other. I am relatively certain that Long Beach wasn’t involved in any actual gold rushing.

The Lobos, on the other hand have, presumably, Lobo.


This is what Glenn Danzig sees when he looks in the mirror.

I’m not sure what the 49ers have in the way of weaponry (Gold pans? Sieves? Maybe a pickaxe?), but I’m pretty sure that whatever it is, it won’t quite match up to the 1990s distilled into a single ridiculous character.

New Mexico advances.

#4 Louisville Cardinals vs. #13 Davidson Wildcats

I’ve already dealt with both Cardinals and Wildcats, and neither is terribly threatening. The Louisville Cardinal (somewhat disappointingly just named “Cardinal Bird”) has teeth, which is starting to make me think I’m wrong and that cardinals have teeth. I don’t think they do, but it’s such a consistent feature that it’s unsettling.



I don’t feel cheer from Cardinal Bird. I feel like I’ve wronged him.

The Wildcats, on the other hand, have this big grey thing with whiskers and detached cheeks? Or something? Gills? It does have little tufts of hair coming out of the tops of its ears, which makes me think they’re going for some kind of lynx, but frankly, I’m just sort of confused.



Deciding between the two entirely on which one I wouldn’t want to have cut off in traffic, I’ll have to give this to Cardinal Bird. He’s got a lot of anger, and I think that probably is the deciding factor in this.

Louisville advances.

Potato Bacon Chowder

I very clearly failed at the November Project, and will never bring it up again, because it doesn't make much sense for me to point it out. Instead, I'm going to continue on as though nothing happened (which, actually, is pretty accurate) and continue with the "Ryan writes about food he makes" series of posts which are probably subconsciously inspired by a summer weekday afternoon viewing of Julie & Julia, which I actually enjoyed. Today's subject: Potato and Bacon Chowder.

A while ago, I bought a five pound sack of potatoes for a dollar at Jewel-Osco. Mostly because five pounds of almost anything for a dollar is a pretty good deal. They sat on a shelf for a short while, because I had no idea what to make with them. I've made mashed potatoes before, but other than that, I have not really explored the versatility of the noble potato. A former housemate of mine (in the Jazz House at Allegheny) made potato soup every other day for a while (between "open events", which usually consisted of renting some part of Ken Burns' Jazz and buying some cheese), as her meal plan had run out and potatoes, evidently, are pretty universally cheap. Sure, you don't want to base your entire diet around it, particularly if you've got phytophthora infestans hanging around, but generally, potatoes are (apparently) pretty awesome. I ran with that, and decided to scour AllRecipes.com, where I'm getting all of these recipes, for a potato soup.

The problem with doing things that way is that while I'm trying to build up a base of general knowledge, there are endless variations on something simple like potato soup. If I had an extensive pantry, I guess I could try a number of these things. If I had, I don't know, an excess of kale hanging around (which, if I ever start a vegan-centric post-punk band, it's going to be called "An Excess of Kale"), I could make this nonsense. If I had chunks of bologna, I could make this provided I am ever able to regain an appetite having read the phrase "chunks of bologna". Do I have frozen peas, ground beef, and a willingness to discard the idea of making potato soup for a vague, faux-poetically named dish from someone who notes in their writeup that weather-themed birthday parties exist? Clouds at Sunset to the rescue. Having none of those things, I went with Potato Bacon Chowder for several reasons. First, making a chowder sounds more impressive than making a soup. Second, it involved bacon, which is more or less all I'm looking for in any recipe. It's a miracle that all of the food I make isn't just a substrate for bacon.

It actually turned out really well. I'll be making it again soon. It seems like it's cheating to use condensed soup as an ingredient for making soup, but it's cheap enough and the recipe makes roughly an enormous amount of potato soup, so I'm fine with that. Evidently, I've still got to work on my chopping skills, as Marina complained that the onions were too large (Which is probably true. Actually, I may have stopped chopping prematurely just because the onion was getting to me, and was bringing back very unpleasant memories of being in an undergraduate lab and working with benzyl bromide, which is a powerful lachrymator and the closest I've ever gotten to being tear-gassed.) I ate it with bread, mostly because I felt like symbolically kicking Robert Atkins in the shin. I didn't actually make that many alterations to the recipe (other than "how can I put even more bacon in this?"), but I'll get to that later, once I have a few more basic dishes under my belt.

More to come, either on food (because food is delicious) or something else (because something else makes this seem less like it's suddenly a culinary blog).