My name is Dickie Cronkite, and I have questions about taste loss.

Item: I've watched approximately 452 hours of NCAA tourney basketball over the last 2 days. That breaks down to about 279 hours of commercials. Suddenly, I want to buy a lot of things.

Are those Enterprise commercials supposed to be funny? And why are they hawking Old Spice deoderant with sweaty leather-clad sex kittens? I know they're going after the dumb beer-guzzling pasty male demographic, but this is getting ridiculous. I mean, does it really feel better with an Aqua-Velva man? I do love me that Lebron hitting 90-footers commercial, though. That never gets old.

Item: Riding a bull is not easy. I think I have whiplash. Oh, and to the owners of the Hogs & Honeys on Sheffield: the Illinois Hell's Angels chapter called. They want their bar back.

Item: Congratulations to the one guy in the contiguous United States who picked Bucknell over Kansas. And the three people who had the Vermont Catamounts over Syracuse. Talk about bracket-busters - it didn't look like there were going to be any big upsets in this first round and then boom! Like a 1-2 punch combination, those games. I called my buddy JD^2 to congratulate him on the historic Vermont win, but to keep things in perspective I added that I have trouble fearing something called a "catamount."

"It's twice your size!" he yelled.

"But it lives in Vermont."

"It'll literally bite your head off!"

"It lives in Burlington. It probably orders a sugar-free latte and then discusses with friends whether Howard Dean is good for the party."

(By the end of that conversation, I don't think JD^2 was very appreciative of my congratulations.)

Item: Next time, I need to actually *learn* salsa dancing. It started well enough - she asked me to dance, and I had enough Dewars in me to think I could pull it off. But I knew I was in trouble a couple of minutes later when she said, "Wait, what nationality are you?" Ouch!

Item: Did I mention I have nothing to do for the next five days? Giddyup!

Item: Oh wait, I'm almost outta money. [deflating noise]

Item: A bar downstairs, an indoor batting cage upstairs. Right across the street from one of the nation's most historic ballparks. I challenge anyone to have a problem with this. And it's perfect for tournament watching, because when one of your teams lays an egg, you can go upstairs and smack the crap out of some balls. The only problem is the token sketchy local guys with boy-band goatees who clearly are spending waay too much time at a batting cage.

Honorable mention goes to Christine, of Dickie Cronkite blog fame, who was getting some good cracks off the bat while wearing heels, and her roommate Alison, who took a foulball on her recently-broken toe. Let's hope the X-rays come back negative.

(The X-rays she still had to pay for, despite having a 2500-dollar university health plan. I am getting very angry right now.)

Item: My roommate apparently despises college basketball. How does that work? He's like TAFKAC, except, you know - far less attractive.

Item: Gonzaga better not lose to Texas Tech. B&G has Tech winning. So does Christine. This is where I could make my move.

Item: For a global perspective on J-school, check in on this blog over the next few months.

Item: Frosty would be in our tournament pool, except tragically he does not know how to operate a computer. The best part? He emails us all and says "I'm in." Then we go to the Web page to check out his brackets...except there are no brackets. "I'm in" - classic! I think I'm gonna start making Frosty-related "I'm in" jokes as much as possible. Like that LeBron commercial, it'll never get old.

Item: Latin men. (Grrrrr) "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!"

Item: Oh look. Texas Tech has is now leading by one. Perfect. I gotta go.