From: oday@lobster.gsfc.nasa.gov  (Orin Day)
Subject: Brush With Greatness, Act I
Reply-To: oday@lobster.gsfc.nasa.gov  (Orin Day)
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 21:32:29 GMT


Warning: This, and the following set of posts, is intended for the less
sensitive readers of the net.  If you are easily offended, press "n" now.

"Brush With Greatness - If You Can't Follow Your Nose, Get Out of the Kitchen"

- how a former Royal and Blue University Basketball Fan chased THE MAN
  and saw the light, even if it did just turn out to be a great big
  drippy booger on the end of somebody's chin, and got the girl, not in
  the end, but in all four corners, and mortgaged his manhood for the
  Tarheel Blue in vain.

[ A Terrible Human Tragedy with hideous loss of human life, well, OK,
  something even more precious, gollum, gollum, in Five Acts, Including
  a rather Poorly thought out Preface. ]


Preface: The Matriculation.

After wiping the DePaul and Loyola programs off my inner thigh,
it was time to proceed upward and onward to a higher level, despite
the fact that it would take all my time and money, and then some
money, and then some time, and then more money. Little did I know then,
starry eyed hoops virgin in royal blue, that I'd end up taking it to the
hole in another shade and writing run-on sentences, worn cliches,
fragments, and ever changing person & tense, to the people of the net
in this electronic "True Confession".

Chorus: "We are the chorus, and We Agree."


Act I: College Life without the net, a foreplay to Dean.

It was a dark and stormy night.  It began innocently enough,
with merely a simple kiss.  Little did they know that it would
lead to "loosing", and mayhem, and murder, and Denver.

It was the Winter of 1990, and the Winter of my discontent.
Rations were scarce, and roommate relations were at an all
time low.  But Earth Girls were Easy - just not in North
Carolina - and as band equipment manager, I'd just scored
an extra rugby shirt.  The management of my equipment is
another story, for another road, another time.  I looked at
the shirt as a "tabula rasa", a blank slate for the coaches
of the NCAA to make their mark, their eternal scribble, a
penetration into the void that would last a lunchtime.

The first to soil the (actually existing and in front of
me now) shirt was Digger Phelps, the acclaimed "Their
mothers carry beds on their backs/Their fathers' mack
trucks can't fill their cracks/Digger Phelps a fuckin'
mick/so Irish suck off my dick" Notre Dame coach.  Soon
followed Lute "Merlin" Olson, a polite fellow even when
lightly steamed, Dick Tarant"ula" of Richmond, Chuck "Do you
really want me to sign this?  Are you sure?  Some great people
have signed this" Swenson of William & Mary, Jim "Hey son, no,
I didn't do it, they framed me" Valvano, Bob "on a" Bender of
Illinois State, Steve Fisher "King" of Michigan, and The Next
President of the United States, North Carolina Coach-Elect
Roy "Huck" Williams and his ne'er-do-well brother Gary.

Various former Royal Blue school players signed the shirt,
as did their honored trainer/grand dragon of Cherryville, NC,
and assorted assistants and athletic directors smelling of
hair tonic and stale margarine.  Members of the media clamored
to be part of the asshole event, including Brent Musburger on
the eve of his parting of ways with CBS on his eventual path
to Harry Carey's drunken stool (and chair), Jim Nantz "in his
pants", Mike "Chocolate Smiles" Francesca"'s", Pat "I'm an
asshole and everybody who's met me knows it" O'Brien, "Free"
James Brown, "I'm a" Dick "Unless You're a Home Fan" Vitale,
Bob "Homer" Harris, Billy "Fudge" Packer, and John "Yeah, tennis
is really a sport, just get a sex change" Feinstein.  Even actor
Danny Aiello (co-star with a yours truly in the flop movie
"Once Around", where that lobster extra fellows' RDU airport band
bathroom sex scene with Southern Mega-Babe-Belle "We've all got a
raging foot fetish for" Holly Hunter, alas, fell to the cutting room
floor, resulting in his attending an evening showing of the movie at
Willowdaile Cinemas with a friend, and nobody else showed up, except
the usher who said "Shut Up", so we said "Fuck Off, Pig, there's nobody
else here, and I'm in the movie" and didn't get thrown out even though
the movie sucked a nut, and the little lobster-mon wasn't in it much)
and former North Carolina State Rodney "Was it fire or ice or just cut
from the NBA" Monroe got into the signing act.

However, this is all another story, as one man stood alone.  Dean Smith,
the Dean of ACC coaches, the Dean of the University of North Carolina,
the Dean of the STATE of College Basketball, the Dean of Dean's
Dairy, the Dean of Old-Boy Chicago Politics, the Dean of James Dean's
turned up collar, and the Dean of Male Personal Hygiene.  This man had
escaped me, and I was determined that he escape me no more.