Hey all. Sorry that I couldn't help out at Cooler, although given my inactive state I'm not sure how much I would have conbributed other than drinking on the sidelines. I had a reason though as I was trying to finish writing my thesis. That's done now. I successfully defended my thesis yesterday, so I suppose this means I have to stop being a student. I won't be leaving UW quite yet though. I'm taking at postdoc here for a year while Catherine finishes up. Then, who knows where I'll end up. It's hard to leave Madison though...

Here’s my non-playing thoughts on the Cooler weekend.

1) John Sokolowski was there. Holly shit, major pleasant surprise for me. During half time of our first game he wrestled and killed a mountain lion with a plastic spoon, then assembled an AK-47 blindfolded using only his feet. He had to leave early to go to a Packer game, which is of course code for “bungee jump out of helicopter to implant a microchip into the brain of a South American dictator”.

2) Midway through the day I’m informed that Dean had sex with a 40+, recent divorce in Paradise’s bed the night previous. Nice work.

3) Dean, Dise and I go out in Milwaukee (other alumni are busy being hippy campers, or spending time with their “wives”). During the course of the night we meet one of Paradise’s fellow attorneys. Dean gets her to buy us shots (which she doesn’t have enough cash to pay for). I accuse her of trying to hit on us, she points out her husband and I immediately start questioning her about swinging. No word yet on how that situation is working out for Dise around the office. The next morning Dise and Dean are talking about girls they know from Milwaukee who they saw out the night before. I become incredulous and ask why I wasn’t introduced. Paradise informs me that he did introduce me and that less than one minute latter the girls told Paradise that they were going to a different part of the bar and that he was welcome, but that they didn’t want to talk to me anymore. No word yet on what the offending comments were.

That girl could pitch

That girl had an absolutely sick slider. No one could have hit it.

Sounds like we did great at Cooler. I was a little disappointed in the fact that all of the updates revolved around what happened ON the field. Those details seem rather unimportant to me. I want stories, damn it, stories. I mean, I live in Connecticut for God's sake, where Miller Lite costs $4.00 and the local undergrads (at Yale) think wearing your navy sportcoat to the party instead of the black one is c-r-a-z-y. Help me out.

Those Poor Red Sox

After seeing the Red Sox flounder in a 5 game series against the Yankees, I was immediately reminded of another poor showing by Boston's finest.

The year was uh.. maybe last year. The place, New York City. A few intrepid souls had made the drive north to revel in one of Opie's last weekends as an individual....well, as an individual in the eyes of the law. Of course those who know him were well aware that he hadn't been an individual for some time before that.

A quick morning stop at Kmart and a short subway ride later, the group was ready to test each others skills in a highly contested wiffle ball home run derby. As the day progressed Opie emerged as one of the front runners to take home the crown. His skills honed from watching many games of craptastic Red Sox baseball, he would walk away from the game victorious, although with an asterick as he received an extra at bat.

Hubris at an all time high, he recklessly took on all comers. Reality would be force fed to him in the form of a high school girl. A three pitch strike out in an impromptu wiffle ball game, at the hands of a well made up teenage girl, would bring Opie's reign at the top back to where all New Englanders belong. Drinking a beer complaining about the supernatural forces that conspire to keep them from winning.

Now you may think that he possibly missed on purpose to let the young lady feel good about herself. But this close up picture clearly shows a face of trepidation as his manhood disappeared in a swing of the bat.

Cooler Classic ReCap:
Hodag Alumni Team with no more than 10 guys at anytime went 1-5. We lost our three pool play games 13-4 to Sub-Zero, 13-10 to Madison (after leading 7-5 at half) and 13-9 to Liquid Assets. We were forced to play Surly in the cross over, but instead decided that we would allow some recent alumns like Gigo play and forfeit. The Alumni Zone (1-4-2) was used extensively throughout the tournament. There were many flashes of brillance from the alumns, but the inability to run and low numbers hurt us. We hope that next year more will join in the fun as a few more bodies likely pushes up a notch.

Cooler has been the third weekend in August forever so you can basically mark your calendar.

Who's next on the list?

I thank Wei for thinking up this blog idea.
I thank my friend Debra for getting me a new job so I have all this free time right now
I thank some inventor for creating the camera phone.
And I thank god for making me asian which means that I have to have the new technology when it comes out and I love taking pictures

So when all these forces have combined what could possibly be the outcome? Possibly pictures like these.

This is my first time writing on a blog. The second nerdiest thing I've done in "cyberspace" is add some of our team shit to the hodag entry on Wikipedia. I will be going to my first badger game since vs. San Diego St. Sept. 24. Who is in?

Tyson isn't the only Hodag under the weather

This rare archival footage of Paradise was taken just seconds after I revealed the shocking details of my “twin incident”.

It’s nice to see Wei’s efforts to do something nice to help us all remain close friends being used for its true purpose, mocking each other.

Chances are if you’re an alumni of a Hodag team from more than a few years ago you know how I’m doing if you’ve come back to Madison, because I’m the only one still fucking here. (oops, forgot Pete’s still here too. I’m the only one still here who will go out and get wasted with you and let you puke on my floor).

If you haven’t been back to Madison in a long time feel free to come crash at my place.

You can puke on the floor.

Pankratz
Hodag 1997-2002
pankratz@Waisman.Wisc.Edu

So Wei Lu came up with this idea mostly out of boredom due to the lack of activity on Billy Layden's blog. No offense to that guy cuz he rocks but you can only leave so many fake comments before you get tired of checking.... although I think my fake Nate Franz comment is most entertaining. Nate, if you haven't seen that yet well, uh... I thought it was funny. Anyways, Wei begged me to post something to get his idear off the ground. After he finished crying I finally caved in but needed something to write aboot. Since this is a Hodag blog this is what came to mind.

As some of you guys know I am moving to L.A. in about 2 weeks. I have been working the same shitty job at Georgetown for nearly 5 years and have accumulated a lot of junk on my hard drive. I have been spending the day going through trying to save personal stuff and pitch what is unncessary. So I came across this picture all the way back from 2003 that I had added a new caption for. Thus starts the Hodag Blog.