I lied.

Attack of the Presidents will resume tomorrow.

And I’ll take the deafening silence as an indicator that no one cares….sniff-sniff….

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St. Bonaventure University is world-renowned for, among other things, its stunning mathmatics department. (This is chiefly because of my father’s presence on the faculty of that department, ahem.)

SBU’s “jewel-in-the-crown” has been its Division I men’s basketball program, although frankly it’s been mainly mediocre with occasional flashes of talent most of the years since Bob Lanier played there. Every few years or so they get good enough to make the NIT, and even more rarely they actually get into the NCAA tournament, to an invariable first-round exit. SBU is located in rural Western New York state, tucked immediately between the towns of Olean and Allegany. It’s not a big school — roughly 2,200 students — but it’s a pretty good one, although over the last decade it’s become something of a party school. The lack of size coupled with the school’s rural location has pretty much put it in semi-permanent “also-ran” status when it comes to the all-important recruiting of basketball talent. It’s simply very hard to get top-flight talent, coming usually from urban landscapes, to come to a rural program that’s a 90-minute drive from the nearest large city and play for a program that’s been in the doldrums for years. Nevertheless, SBU continues to spend large amounts of money on its basketball program, mainly to keep the alumni happy.

Now, I wonder if that might be in jeopardy, after the current train-wreck winds its course.

Basically, a player who was ineligible according to NCAA rules was allowed to play, after the head coach somehow strong-armed the kid through the admissions process. The NCAA found out and required the Bonnies to forfeit six of the games they’ve already played this year, the effect of which is to basically ruin the season. That’s bad enough, but it got even worse when the players themselves — absent any leadership or discipline from anyone in a faculty position at all — decided that they were simply not going to show up for their last two games of the year, either. That’s right: the players, in a fit of pique, threw in the towel on the season. I envision them saying, en masse and in their bast Cartman-from-South Park voices, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

And the SBU administration’s response to all this? Variants of “Huh-whuh?”, “Not me!”, “Duh…” and, most endearing of all, “No comment because I’m in California on ‘University Business’.” Now the Atlantic-Ten conference is justifyably angry; Bonnies ticket holders are justifyably angry; the teams who were supposed to play the Bonnies in those games are justifyably angry. The whole business may well cost the SBU president, athletic director, and basketball head coach their jobs.

Good.

(Frank admission: I don’t really care much about NCAA basketball in general or March Madness in particular — it’s my least favorite of the year’s major sporting events. But this whole business is disgraceful.)

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The Buffalo Bills have been pretty aggressive so far this offseason, even since my last update on them, two days ago. Now they’ve signed Cincinnati Bengals free-agent linebacker Takeo Spikes, who is apparently one of those really good players who has had the misfortune of playing his first four years in the NFL on one of the worst teams, so nobody’s heard of him yet. I remember listening to the Bills game last season against the Bengals on the radio — it was the last game of the year, the Bills were already out of the playoffs, and it was against the Bengals, so it didn’t come anywhere near a sell-out for TV — and the Bills’ radio announcers were gushing about this Spikes guy. The Bengals have made him their “transition” player, which means they can match any contract offered to him and he has to stay put; but the Bengals have already signed his apparent replacement, so it looks very much like they’re letting him go.

Also, the Bengals’ most recent head coach, Dick LeBeau, has joined the Bills as assistant head coach. Even considering the Bengals’ woefulness the last few years, I can’t think this is anything but good. LeBeau’s resume is very impressive, as a defensive mind, and he should be a big help to Bills head coach Gregg Williams.

And lastly, the Bills apparently are close to signing Tennessee free agent receiver Kevin Dyson, to be their third wide-out after the former number three, Josh Reed, moves up to Number Two following the Peerless Price trade.

I still have questions about Gregg Williams as a head coach — even on a rebuilding team he’s been outcoached and embarrassed too many times for my tastes — but the Bills’ current braintrust is, to my mind, putting on a clinic over the last few years of how to rebuild a team quickly.

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I finally updated the links to the books I’m selling on Ebay, so they’ll no longer link to ended auctions that have been relisted. Or something like that. The current batch of books isn’t moving as well as previous ones I’ve offered….hint, hint….

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If Science Fiction has an all-time greatest cheerleader, his name is Forrest J. Ackerman. This man’s dedication to SF, Fantasy, Horror and all the related stuff throughout the years is legendary, as well it should be. Sadly, Ackerman’s recent history hasn’t been particularly good — he’s had to sell off chunks of his collection; he’s had health problems; and he’s been involved in a nasty set of legal problems with an opportunistic lower-life-form named Ray Ferry.

Well, on that last front, apparently Ackerman (a.k.a. “Forry”, a.k.a. “The AckerMonster”, a.k.a. “Dr. Acula”) has finally gotten some very good news.

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I’ve been watching occasional reruns of Star Trek: Voyager lately; it’s the only incarnation of Trek available in Syracuse on a broadcast basis. I’m finding that Voyager, while still not being all that compelling, isn’t as bad as I remember it being. It’s pedestrian but entertaining — all the annoying technobabble of The Next Generation, with less of the good characterization of Deep Space Nine.

What’s really catching my attention, though, is the Seven-of-Nine character. Could the producers conceivably have been any more blatant in their intention with this character to capture the loyalty of the “Basement-dwelling SF-nerd onetime-Trek-fan-who-has-now-discovered-anime and yet has never seen a real live female” crowd? Yeesh!

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Time for a Buffalo Bills offseason update: the Bills have already signed a free-agent linebacker from Houston, and are in the market for another; and today they pulled off their biggest deal yet this offseason. They traded receiver Peerless Price, who in his fourth year had a breakout year last season, to the Falcons for a first-round draft pick. This way they avoid having to pay Price a huge amount of money on a one-year contract — he was a free-agent, but the Bills had placed their “franchise” label on him — and while they lose one of the league’s best young WR’s, they still have second-year man Josh Reed to pair with Eric Moulds. Reed showed a lot of promise in his rookie year, most of all in his precision on his routes, which calls to mind another great Bills WR named Reed. Also, the Bills get a pick in this draft’s first round, which they needed. (They traded their own first-rounder to the Patriots a year ago, for Drew Bledsoe.) The draft this year is said to be especially deep on defensive linemen, and that is a huge area of need for the Bills.

I think the Bills also signed a tight end, although I’m not sure. They do need a good TE, after releasing Jay Riemersma a few weeks back. Riemersma was always a strange case: the Bills gave him a big contract a few years back, despite the fact that his production really didn’t warrant the dollars he was given; and it was standard procedure to watch a Bills game on TV and have the announcers say that Riemersma was one of the league’s top tight ends, even though he often didn’t have a catch until the third quarter. Seems to me when you’ve got one of the league’s top TEs, you throw to him once in a while. Anyhoo….

(Oh, and former Bills QB Rob Johnson will now be taking sacks and getting injured for the Redskins. I’m sure he’ll work his way into Dan Snyder’s heart really quickly….)

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If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a crapload of chicken in your freezer. Despite the approzimately eight billion ways of cooking chicken that have been invented since the beginning of time, chicken still gets pretty boring after a while.

Anyway, if you have to cook some chicken and you want a fast recipe that makes for some really flavorful eating, just marinate your chicken for several hours in equal parts honey, soy sauce and sesame oil. How much marinade you make will depend on how much chicken you use — for a couple of good-sized pieces, I typically use one-quarter cup each. Just whisk those three things together, and soak the chicken in it before baking or grilling. Use the remainder to baste the chicken while it’s cooking. Easy, and delicious.

(Oh, and don’t salt your chicken at all. The soy sauce will make it plenty salty enough.)

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Attack of the Presidents will resume either tomorrow or Sunday, for the four of you who are waiting with baited breath for it….

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President Bush said nothing at his press conference last night that he hasn’t (a) already said, most recently at the State of the Union, and (b) said better, in such prepared-text settings as the State of the Union. I think that if he wanted to make his case to the American people one last time before the bombs start dropping (and dropping and dropping and dropping, if that “Shock and Awe” business is really the way they’re going to do it), a speech from the Oval Office might have better served the purpose. (Of course, then he’d likely end up seeming redundant when he gives the inevitable Oval Office speech upon the commencement of hostilities.)

This news conference was, simply, useless. Nothing was said, whatsoever, that would sway persons opposing the war to the President’s side; nothing new was offered, no new information came out, and the case as it exists (which I support) was simply not helped. If anything, I think Bush may have hurt things a bit, because as far as I could tell, the news conference did nothing to address my biggest beef — that Bush and his administration, while having given all manner of thought to the upcoming war itself, has not given much thought at all to what happens after and even less thought to any of the pressing problems elsewhere in the world.

And I’m frankly confused as to why Bush’s political team, which is usually very effective, would choose to go the route of a formal press conference when everything is coming to a head, given that Bush is simply not very effective “off the cuff”, as he showed last night. He hems and haws, at times he looks bewildered by the very format of the event (actually saying at one point “This thing’s scripted” being a key indicator), and at other times he resorts to his trademark smirk as he repeats himself.

Basically, I found the entire thing….odd.

(Some folks have speculated that he looked “medicated”. This could be; the possibility reminds me of the second campaign debate in 1988, in which Michael Dukakis answered one question after another in as robotic and pasty a fashion as was conceivable — including the infamous opening question, “If your wife were raped and murdered….” Turned out that Dukakis was fighting off a bad cold and was likely shot full of NyQuil and Contac.)

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