Highly-Collectible
March Madness Edition
Keywords: UNC basketball , Final Four, 2000, NCAA tournament, Joe Forte, Joseph Forte, Brendan Haywood, Brenden Haywood, Brian Birsticker, Bill Guthridge, tarheels, Florida Gators, Tulsa Golden Hurricane
Highly-Collectible
March Madness Edition
Friday March 23: UNC beats Tulsa- 10:20pm
tip-off
I saw two people catch on fire at the Franklin St. bonfire following the
game. After withstanding the Tulsa's Golden Hurricane, revellers
attempted to continue their dominance over the forces of nature by going
head to head with the Rubbish Fire. The students, apparently
drunk to the point of fire retardance, or at least fire retardation, ran
and jumped through the small bonfire. One guy fell down in the middle,
but he didn't seem to mind too much. He just picked himself
up and strolled off to the side where people began frantically beating
on his smoldering jeans as a few of the more level-headed onlookers shouted
"pour beer on him".
The second
person wasn't so much on fire as fire was on her. A roll of toilet
paper was thrown through the bonfire flames, igniting 
the
unravelled tail on the way through. The head of this cottonelle
comet collided with the head of a coed, and the arch of its still-flaming
tail gently fluttered together into a bunch on her shoulder. Thinking
she was on fire, the coed began clutching at the bathroom tissue and shrieking
wildly. Within fractions of a second, the flaming toilet tissue tail
was reduced to a few feathery pieces of ash. The victim was left
unharmed, but very much surprised.
Sunday March 25: UNC beats Tennesse- afternoon
game
To quote Jason
Howard's Fiesta Bowl t-shirt, "Hey Tennessee, I volunteer to kick your
ass". The Sunday afternoon crowd was much more family-oriented than
the Friday night crowd. A fire was built, but nobody went in.
The family atmosphere was marred, however, when a hippie chick flashed
her thingies for an NBC-17 camera man outside of Ben and Jerry's and in
full view of many small children, Jason and myself fortunately among
them. Disappointingly, Jason, who was accompanied by his fiancee,
chose to refrain from both hooting and hollaring. The NBC-17 camera
man became very embarrassed and quickly walked off, which was kind of a
strange reaction for a guy who had unabashedly solicited the display seconds
earlier.
Saturday April 1: UNC loses to Florida- 9:30pm
tip-off
As you can
imagine, the crowds were a little bitter on Saturday. They were also
a little intoxicated: I am told that many fans were at the bars staking
out seats as early as 2pm. I tried to watch the game at Sports Bar,
but I got there at 5:30 and it was already filled to capacity.
I ended up watching at JT's neighbor's place. At one point near the
end of the the game, some guy from Auburn started doing the Gator
chomp because of his SEC connection, so JT, more because he is a Florida
State grad than because UNC was playing the Gators, got up, walked across
the room, and matter-of-factly poured one gulp's worth of beer on the guy's
head. The guy laughed it off, then bitched about it later when JT
was in the bathroom.
Frustrations
were also vented after the game at 23 Steps, where the huge trash bin by
the exit was dumped down the 23 steps in an avalanche of stale beer and
glass. Later, there was a scuffle over by the bar and a bloody-headed
guy emerged, helped by his friends. As they passed directly in front
of me, a guy sprinted out of the crowd behind them and smashed a bottle
over the back of one of the bloody guy's friend's heads. In the movies,
the guy with the bottle would have yelled "Daylight savings start tonight-
better get some SLEEP", as he hit the guy and the guy would crumple over.
But he didn't yell anything and the bottle popped on the guy's head like
a lightbulb thrown at a brick wall, leaving the guy who got hit rubbing
his head and looking a little confused, but otherwise unharmed. The
bouncers broke it up after that and 5 or 6 cops came a few minutes later.
After the cops came, the bloody guy started getting in someone's face and
was forcibly removed from that person's face by a cop. He didn't like that
too much and continued to struggle and talk trash until 3 cops threw his
drunk, bloody ass against a post, twisted his arms behind his back and
cuffed him.
On the way
home, we passed the enterance to Players where two other guys were about
to get into it. The one guy was telling the other guy, "you better
stay over there- I'll break your f@%&ing ass off". I was
a little drunk, but all I could think was that, in order to break off a
normally fleshy and resilient protrusion like an ass, you would need either
dry ice or liquid nitrogen. My ride home kept walking, so I didn't
get to see how that one ended.
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