2 Minute Drill

These are my quick hit thoughts of the week.

I’ve been back to both UVA home football games so far this fall, and it has reaffirmed my belief that nothing is better than Game Day. A beautiful fall Saturday afternoon chock full of tailgating, live college football, friends, sundresses, college football on television and alcohol simply cannot be beat. It’s at the end of one of these perfect days that you realize, “There is nothing I would have rather done today”. And this is true if you are 12, 20, 45 or 80 years old. Even at a school like Virginia where we will never contend for a national title, the pure happiness and optimism that emerges on Game Days has no rival. The six days of the year that host home football games cannot be ruined by anything. Everyone is on cloud 9, with a drink in hand and friends by their side.

I don’t know what’s more unbelievable, the fact that UVA starts a white, walk on freshman wide receiver or that he scored a touchdown against Georgia Tech. This is astonishing. A BCS conference school should never start a walk on freshman wide receiver. The fact that Staton Jobe is white makes it even more ridiculous. Maybe Al Groh is trying to send the opposing cornerbacks into convulsive laughter right before the snap by continuing to send out Jobe with the starting 11. Buy hey, maybe the dude can play. He did haul in the game winning touchdown against the Jackets while breaking the tackle of a black and probably scholarship receiving Georgia Tech defensive back. It would be interesting to know if a BCS conference school has ever started a white, freshman, walk on, wide receiver for the first game of the season. That’s right folks, Jobe has been the starter since the opening game at Wyoming. Truly remarkable. I bet Dave Chappelle could do a hilarious sketch about this.

UVA has shown some very unexpected yet promising qualities here in the first quarter of the season. In-game resilience is the term that keeps coming to mind, something I had never seen out of the Cavs in a long time. I am treating the Wyoming game as a fluke, as it looks more and more like that game was an anomaly than a sign of what’s to come. In the Duke game, the Blue Devils pulled within 17-13 after multiple horrendous UVA turnovers deep in their own territory. The Wahoos responded with a 6-minute, 15 play, 82 yard touchdown drive that sealed the game. The offense showed remarkable composure and maturity (two words never associated with UVA football) after playing down to the level of their inferior opponent for most of the game. Against Carolina, the defense was able to stop the bleeding at exactly the right time. They must have been incredibly frustrated with the offense’s inability to hit paydirt (1 TD, 5 FG’s), but held firm on the two point conversion to save the game. And in the most recent game against the Ramblin’ Wreck, UVA actually responded to the adversity of giving up a big lead in ways they had choked before (see Maryland, 2006). This comeback was the most impressive and all three area of the game were hugely important. Special teams took advantage of a muffed punt, the offense capitalized on the next play for 7 and the defense again held strong and didn’t allow another point. I still don’t think we are a great team, maybe not even a good team, but these are the kind of characteristics that win close games at the end of the year. Throw in money kicker Chris Gould (7-8 on field goals) and surprising punter Ryan Weigand (averaging a ridiculous 48.6 yards per kick, good for 3rd in the nation) and UVA has the potential to surprise a lot of teams this year.

Lastly, Christian’s pizza on the corner is absolutely going to clean house. I mean, a total and absolute slutting awaits them every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. A genius move getting the primo real estate they deserve. It has been slammed every time I have walked by. Charlottesville now has the holy triumvirate of late night eating all within 100 yards of each other. Sandwiches, Burgers and Pizza from Little John’s, White Spot and Christian’s is too good to be true. Throw in the option of dialing up College Inn anytime before 3am makes Charlottesville a veritable late night king. And so the Oceanliner ends this week with the timeless words of Schnooby:

Late night…late night…I like late night.

Over and out.

Ribrary Courts: Two Thumbs Down

Over the weekend I decided to see if the glorious building we all know and love as Ribrary Courts had a website of its own. Surely such a site would add much hilarity to its already growing legend. Alas, the “management” of Ribrary Courts has not taken advantage of the World Wide Web, as there is no official site for the building (besides The Oceanliner of course). What came up on the Google search however, might be even funnier. Apparently there are sites on the web that you can go on and review an apartment building that you have lived in. You can grade the building on things such as parking, office staff, maintenance and safety. Two sites of this nature (apartmentratings.com and apartment reviews.com) had pages devoted to Ribrary Courts, and the results were preposterous. Apparently my roommates and I were not the first people to notice how ridiculous the building and management team are. Remember how I’ve been saying that we have only had hilarious stuff happen to us and it was just a matter of time until we got screwed? Well, the people that have written these posts are definitely the ones that have gotten screwed. For starters, let’s take a look at some of the titles of the reviews that have been posted:

Terrible Place

Nice building but AWFUL management

And my personal favorite…

If you want to get abused by management, move here

This is not good. I haven’t even read any of the comments and the sinking feeling in my stomach returns as I realize I have 9 more months of contractually obligated living time in Ribrary Courts. That is of course, if we don’t get evicted for living illegally, which we’re doing by having two people live in bedrooms without windows. Oh wait, let me go to a reviewer with analysis on this front:

While the apartments are advertised as 3 br, they actually only have one legal bedroom. I lived in the "breakfast nook", and another roomamte lived in the den.

By the way, I live in the Breakfast Nook and Beercan lives in the Den. We fought for hours over the proper titles that we could call our rooms, but I emerged victiorious and asserted my claim as King of the Breakfast Nook. But let’s not get lost in all this dilly dally and get back to Ebert and Roeper. Let’s get to the heart of the reviews, the section on management. Again, as I say a lot in this space, you can’t make this shit up. Drumroll please…

I've lived in the building since it was constructed, but the change in management companies is making me leave.

I have lived in the building for more than three years and decided to move out after constant turn over of the office management, poor service, disrespectful attitude, and high regulation within the apartment complex. Bottom line: while Library courts seems like a good deal (for Ballston) save your money and go elsewhere.

Ouch. Two strikes right off the bat. This isn’t looking good. But let’s see how the train wreck unfolds…

The management was mediocre at best. They only maintain office hours from 9-5 Monday through Friday, and even during those hours they often didn't pick up the phone or were not around.

The parking garage doors were broken a lot too, letting anyone come and go from the garage/ building.

We had some problems with hot water as well. We went an entire week taking cold showers, and for about a month after that it would be hot and cold sporadically.

Whiff, whiff whiff! Management is pitching a perfect game! My roommates and I have already had trouble with the hot water, I can’t wait until it craps out in the middle of winter. Pushing onward…

Management has initiated a series of ridiculous rules and policies that are onerous. They have also started nickel and diming every aspect of the building...want to swim in the pool, you now pay a fee (per person); pay with more than one check, pay a fee; want to put furniture on your balcony, pay a fine if it's not within the declared "bronze" scheme. And good luck getting anyone to reply to repeated messages, they don't even bother to address problems with the apartment.

Zing! This reviewer killed 3 birds with one post. Now we get to the people that are really pissed off. I hope Ceejay never has to meet these people’s wrath:

Do not move in here!!! The staff is horrible and extremely rude. They may unexpectedly "adjust" your lease. Even if you pay for parking ($70 a month, not cheap) they will accidentally tow your car and not reimburse you. Awful place to live.

And the number 1 most scathing review goes to…Well I don’t know their name, but here it is. Priceless.

The lobby is nice and the apartments themselves are nice. Don't let this fool you though. Every aspect of this apartment is ruled over by totalitarian like policies by the management. Additionally, if something is wrong maintenance wise, forget about them fixing it. In summary, under no circumstances move in to this apartment. As impressive as the lobby and apartment may seem, I swear to you that you will deeply regret it.

Wow, there you have it folks. Exit polls on Ribrary Courts are at an all time low. While I read these comments to my roommates, we all had a good chuckle but with a twinge of nervousness. It’s like we are climbing one of those pyramid schemes but haven’t plummeted down yet. Hopefully it will never come and we will triumph over Ribrary Courts. Who knows. Anyway, hope to see everyone back in Charlottesville this weekend for our Ga Tech ass whooping. For now though, you’ll have to excuse me, I need to retire to my Breakfast Nook.

Ribrary Courts: Under Construction

Our luxury apartment in Ribrary Courts has a balcony that overlooks the street behind our building. We have a nice view of a row of houses and Quincy Park is just visible to the right. Current Oceanliner roommate Will “Beercan” Potts was kind enough to bring up a set of patio furniture, so it is really quite homely up on the third floor. It also acts as our Phonebooth, as it is almost impossible to get cell phone reception inside our digs, but that’s another story.

Anyway, there is some sort of maintenance unit located directly below our balcony in the grass behind out building that the “management” of Ribrary Courts has tried to conceal as a rock. They have not done a good job, as it is clearly human made. What really gives it away is that they have started doing construction on this piece of equipment and dug a moat around the rectangular 3-foot high stone box and protected it with 2 orange road cones. No sign. No rope. No tape. Two orange road cones. That’ll definitely keep the hoodlums away. How does this relate to our story you may ask? Let’s get right into it.

Last week our buddy Kye came and spent a couple days in our apartment to look for a place to live in the Arlington area. It did not take him long to make up his mind that he didn’t want to live in our building. Anyway, he stayed with us for a couple of days and then left. During the day he had been using Schling’s keycard to get into the building. Well, he needed to leave the keycard somewhere because Schling was at work. So in the middle of the day I get this email from Schling:

so kye left for cville
apparently he put my card key under a traffic cone in back of the building
its in a card box apparently
he said its under the construction cone that is accessible without having to walk through the mud

Beautiful. You can pull the “leaving your keys/card in someplace witty” when it’s a house. This doesn’t fly for an apartment building. I was going to get home before Schling so I had to go check it out. And sure enough, under the closest road cone to the street, was a deck of playing cards with the Ribrary Courts key card inside.

What a terrible plan. I bet Kye felt so sneaky too. “I’ve got the perfect hiding place! A road cone on a construction site! Nobody ever moves things around, especially road cones, when things are temporary! Oh man this is so cool. Now I know what the Spy Kids feel like!”

Not only that, but when I went upstairs our door was unlocked. Kye had left our apartment free for the taking for a solid 4 hours. Awesome. But hey, you know what, everything worked out fine and we got a funny story out of it. I took a bunch of pictures of the whole thing but my computer crashed like a champ. Hopefully I’ll get them up soon.

Two more Ribrary Courts tidbits before I sign off
1) We didn’t have hot water last Friday or Monday. Sweet.
2) Remember the package counter that I described in a previous brog entry? Yeah, someone’s package had been opened and was still sitting on the ledge. That’s comforting.

Yet another Ribrary Courts adventure that had the possibility of turning out poorly but ended up just being hilarious. I feel like our luck is running out though, we might be at the end of our nine lives. I would love to hear any amusing anecdotes concerning everyone’s living conditions, so feel free to comment or send me an email. Until next time, over and out.

Bingo was his Lame-O

Whats up yall. I'm sure people have been severely dissapointed by the lack of a post in the past week. Conan joked last week about the "Conan monster", a creature that comes out in the night and dissapoints people. It's now synonymous with an Oelschlager as well. I must apologize. I was back down in the glory that is Charlottesville for our "game" against Dook and when I got back my computer decided viruses were cool and shut down. Hopefully I will be back and as sarcastic as ever before the end of the week. There will be a Ribrary Courts update, and other random hilarity. For all of you ex Wahoos out there, put it on your schedule to come back for Georgia Tech on the 22nd. The Oceanliner will again be gracing the Ville with his presence, as will Glubiak, Tyler, Eschenroeder and many more. So stay tuned, keep it real and walk it out.

The Tragedy in Laramie

Sometimes in sports, the final statistics are not telling of how the game really played out. Some competitive games turn into blowouts in the last couple of minutes. There are times where one team dominates another statistically but does not capitalize on scoring opportunities and loses. There are other occasions where the final numbers exactly reflect one team’s dominance of another. Unfortunately, this was the case with Saturday’s college football game between Wyoming and my alma mater, the University of Virginia. Final score, Wyoming 23 Virginia 3. This was the score that stunned my hazy eyes very late Saturday night. The game was not on TV at my girlfriend’s apartment during our Labor Day Weekend cookout and after that we went to the Nats game and out to Georgetown. When I finally started pouring through the box score, it told me everything I needed to know. I felt like I had watched the game, although I’m very glad I didn’t. The numbers spoke to a complete embarrassment at the hands of a Mountain West team that went 6-6 last year. So as painful as it is, let’s go through some stats that perfectly depict the Tragedy in Laramie for what it really was.

First Downs: WYO 27 UVA 5

This is just ridiculous. Completely mind-boggling. I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed a bigger disparity between first downs made between two D1-A teams. A complete jaw dropper.

Total Yards: WYO 471 UVA 110

I’m at a loss for words. This shows the ineptitude on both offense and defense. Completely pathetic. This was a top 30 defense in the country last year too.

3rd Down Efficiency: WYO 10-20 UVA 3-13

It is almost impossible to win a football game when you allow the opponent to convert on over half of their third down tries and you come in at a stellar 23%

Offensive Plays Run: WYO 89 UVA 47

I’m speechless.

Time of Possession: WYO 40:19 UVA 19:41

There’s nothing left to say. The best analysis in the world cannot describe this loss better than these final numbers. Not even Mike Patrick’s.

Here’s a quick tidbit! Wyoming hadn’t allowed less than 130 yards of total offense in a game since 1978! And that was to national power South Dakota.

I am heading down to Charlottesville this weekend for the home opener against Duke. I am 100% confident that we will win, but the sour taste of Wyoming makes it just a little bitter. But it will still be a beautiful fall day of football, and you can’t beat that. In other news, there might be a Ribary Courts update soon, so stay tuned. Until then, over and out.