Welcome back my fellow blasters. This weekend I am going to discuss my biggest takeaways from the first weekend on March Madness. I will also do a deep dive on the season finale of Apple TV’s Severance. Finally, I will share my observations about personality and work habits from different generations. Hold on to your butts cause it’s possible that America’s self-proclaimed “Greatest Generation” is going to get roasted!
Athletics
This weekend is a lot of sport fans favorite weekend of the year. Almost nonstop high intensity college basketball games from Thursday afternoon until Sunday night. Even nondrinkers such as I are going to feel more than a little hungover Monday morning. I know I am after watching easily over thirty hours of college basketball over the weekend.
Marriages have been tested. Money has been lost. Tears have been shed. Pizza and wings have been consumed and blasted into toilets the same way my guy Walter Clayton Jr blasted a three pointer in the clutch to knock off back-to-back champion UConn.
My guy came through to finally knock out the Connecticut Huskies in the best game of the weekend. Despite not having the greatest season compared to their expectations, UConn fought to the bitter end. They gave my championship pick, the Florida Gators, the test they needed. UConn led for most of the game but the talent and will of Florida prevailed in the end.
My dude Walter Clayton Jr is just the best. I will stand and die on the hill proclaiming if he was just a little younger he would be a lottery pick this June in the NBA draft. That being said if a team like the Boston Celtics or Denver Nuggets is able to draft him late in the first round the rest of the NBA fucked up big time. It’s hard for me to come up with a good NBA comparasion. However, I could easily see him becoming the next Jamal Crawford. My guy Walter will give any team that drafts him an automatic scoring boost coming off the bench.
Ok I have finished drooling over the swag and composure of 22-year-old college basketball player in Walter Clayton Jr. Let’s move on and get ready for it to move as I discuss an 18-year-old college basketball player. Cooper Flagg is the man. If you have not seen him play yet and you are a fan of basketball you are doing yourself a large disservice.
There is not much that I can say about Cooper that has not already been said by the media. I am very excited to see what he can accomplish at the next level. The Duke player that played the best this weekend however was his teammate Tyrese Proctor.
Proctor is an interesting case study in today’s college basketball climate. After his promising freshman season Proctor was projected as a late first round pick in the 2023 NBA draft. Proctor elected to come back to Duke for a second year because of the assumption that he could be a very high draft pick in the 2024 draft. For this to take place he would have to have a solid Sophomore campaign. Sadly, Proctor seemed to take a step back his sophomore season and his draft stock subsequently plummeted.
Proctor’s three point shot just seemed to disappear last year. He shot it decently from three point range his freshman season. Now Proctors three-point shot has not only returned but also seemed to improve. He shot an incredibly impressive seven for eight from three-point range in Duke’s second round game against Baylor.
Personally, I find it refreshing to see a story like this where a player like Proctor returned to school and improved as a player. This is one of the positives of the NIL ruling allowing players to make some money while playing college basketball. Currently Proctor is projected to be a second-round pick. I could see him returning to Duke for his senior season. He could earn his degree and possibly make more money with NIL contributions than he would on a two-way NBA contract.
Another big headline from the weekend was the battle between two legendary coaches Saturday afternoon. John Calipari and his Arkansas Razorbacks defeated Rick Pitino and St. Johns. The Razorbacks were significant underdogs to St Johns. As someone who bet on St. Johns I was pretty surprised to see how flat the Red Storm came out of the gates.
St. Johns made a few valiant attempts to get back into the game. However, never at any point did I feel as though I had a legitimate chance to win my bet. Arkansas had the game in hand for the entirety of the matchup.
Personally, I did not think this was that big of an upset. Arkansas has a lot of talent on their team. If there is one thing Calipari can do is recruit talent to his basketball teams. For example, sophomore guard DJ Wagner was one of the top players in his high school class. after having a disappointing freshman season with Calipari at Kentucky Wagner followed his coach across state lines to join the Razorbacks. The change of scenery has seemed to work wonders for the kid as he is starting to finally live up to his potential.
Time to follow up on my last post about how undeserving the university of North Carolina was of receiving their at large bid. It was incredibly satisfying to see them get thoroughly outplayed by Ole Miss. Ole Miss was a middle of the pack team in the SEC. UNC did make a run at the end of the game to make it close. It was another classic case of too little too late for the Tar Heels. It honestly felt like the kids wanted to see how much they could fall behind by to fuel hater’s fires. Enjoy yet another quad one loss on your record losers.
All in all, it was a pretty tame opening weekend. There were a lot of double-digit victories. At the time of posting this the highest seed remaining is Calipari’s Arkansas squad who has a ten seed. That is unless Colorado State pulls off the upset tonight against Maryland. Personally, I wouldn’t find that too surprising as Colorado State is a large State school with a lot of resources.
We may not have a Cinderella this season. At least we will have some JUICY matchups in the sweet sixteen.
If anything crazy happens in the games that take place after this post I will be sure to talk about them during the week next week.
Entertainment
The event everyone had been waiting for finally happened this Friday on Severance. We finally learned what the files that Lumon refiners were working on were. Apparently, each file pertains to an aspect of an individual person’s psyche. Mark S. had been working on his wife Gemma’s psyche without knowing it for two seasons.
The abstract nature of this show makes it very hard to discuss in my opinion. It is a very fun show to talk about with other fans of the show. It is however almost impossible to explain the nuances and premises of the show to people who have not at least seen the entire first season.
There are still plenty of mysteries to be solved. Lumon clearly wants to completely sever all emotions from people. The final test being Gemma disassembling a crib that her husband bought for their unborn child who died during her pregnancy. This was more than just a little savage on Lumon’s part. There clearly are no limits to this corporation’s cruelty.
Severance is at its best to me when it is both a workplace satire and a commentary on corporate greed. One of the funniest scenes was during season one when the data refiners were gifted an egg cart for their hard work the previous quarter. As a former corporate drone myself, that part hit very close to home. There were many times during my tenure at a large financial institution where my team was gifted pizza or burritos in exchange for working hard tireless hours for the company.
Don’t get me wrong, at the time I thought it was fucking awesome to get free burritos or pizza at work. The more removed I am from the situation I do find it more than a little fucked up. I traded so much of my time and mental wellbeing to a billion-dollar corporation in exchange for a mediocre salary and Qdoba.
Milchick was once again the MVP of the episode to me. His entrance when Mark completed the file was possibly the funniest part of the season. I really hope that Milchick breaks good and decides to join the rebellion against Lumon. It appears that he is slowly starting to understand that no matter how hard he works and how much of his life he dedicates to Lumon, Lumon is never going to show him the respect he deserves.
I really wish that Mark’s eccentric brother-in-law Rickon played a larger role in this season. He was one of my favorite characters from the first season. I hope he is going to be a larger part of the narratitve for the next season. It feels like there is more to this character than meets the eye.
One of the biggest moments of the season was Jaime Eagan’s admission that he does not love his daughter Helena Eagan. He said this to his daughter’s innie Helly R. He also weirdly professed his admiration for Helly R. I think there is a good chance that Jaime will want Helly R to replace Helena as his heir.
Another big moment during the conversation between Helly and Jaime was Jaime’s admission to “siring other children in the shadows.” This of course has led to numerous theories about who secret Eagans could be. I think Mr. Drummond, who Mark accidentally killed in the finale, was an Eagan. The white skin and bushy red hair with blue eyes are all similar to Helly. Another character that fits this description is my dude Rickon. I hope that Rickon is a secret Eagan cause that would be so big for him.
I would like to talk about one of my other favorite TV shows in CBS’s survivor. I fell in love with the show during the pandemic. I was desperate to watch some form of competition, so I decided to start from the beginning. I watched season one of this hit reality show. A year and a half later I had watched all forty, that is right four zero, seasons that were out at the time and I was HOOKED.
The forty eighth season is currently airing this spring on CBS. I think the show is off to a good start. Sadly, one of the biggest personalities in Thomas was eliminated last week. He was eliminated off the heels of well-played idol play by Kyle and Cammila.
I think Cammila has all the tools to succeed as a Survivor player in this new era of Survivor. Survivor is long past the days where big burly muscular players succeed. You need to have social skills as well as good puzzle skills. You just are never going to win an individual challenge late in the game if you suck ass at puzzles like me. Cammila seems to have great social skills and has already demonstrated that ability to kick butt at puzzles. She is also very slight in stature. This allows her to slide under other people’s radars when they are considering who the biggest threats in the game are.
I am very excited to see what the season holds for her. Watch as she gets eliminated next week after I just spent an entire paragraph praising her.
I will continue to discuss this season as it continues. I feel that we have the potential to have a few future Survivor all stars from this season.
Life
This weekend I was thinking a lot about all the different types of people and personalities that I have been lucky enough to encounter in my professional life. We are at an interesting time in society. A combination of less physically demanding professions and decreasing social security benefits are forcing a lot of people to work longer than they have in the past. This has led to a lot of people from very different generations forced to work together in a professional setting. I am solidly a millennial myself. If you have ever had the pleasure of witnessing a baby boomer interact with member of generation z it is something to behold.
To be fair I am going to make fun of every generation a little so no one feels too picked on. That being said I seriously doubt many baby boomers besides my mom are going to read this post. You have to know how to use the internet to read a blog right?
Stereotypes exist for a reason. There usually is a lot of truth to them. Millennials are known to be overly competitive and very impatient. I can attest that a lot of my fellow millennials do indeed share these traits. I do have to say that impatience does seem to be a trait shared by a lot of generations. Some of the most impatient people I have encountered have skewed towards the older side.
Speaking of older people, I personally have noticed a strong sense of entitlement that emanates from the older generation. I have worked with a lot of successful older people who are used to getting everything that they want. It was very hard to tell them that they could not have something. Even if the reason for someone not getting what they wanted was something as serious as breaking the law. Baby boomers and gen xers would not care. This hardheaded approach is definitely a contributing factor to their success. It’s just hard to be put between a rock and a hard place. Either you make your client unhappy, or you break the law or some sort of company rule.
On to generation z for a moment. This generation is very fascinating to me. I do admire some of the traits of this generation such as their open-mindedness to a lot of social issues. However, I do think that growing up with the internet has fully broken their brains to an extent.
Some of my favorite colleagues have been from this generation. However, one thing that I cannot get over this generation is their obsession with their cell phones. One time I asked two gen zers to go on a walk with me at work. I suggested we leave our phones at our desks and live in the moment. They looked at me like I suggested that we should try to make out with an elephant. There was just no way they could be apart from their phone for fifteen whole minutes.
The bottom line is there is a lot we can still learn from each other. One of the biggest benefits to going to college in my mind is meeting all sorts of people from different walks of life. This is also the case when you go to work at an office and interact with other human beings. I am truly worried what we will look like twenty years from now as a society. A good portion of us will have been working remotely for decades at this point. People are going to have a hard time interacting with people who are not similar to them. I am really worried we are socially regressing as a society after decades of progress.
One of my favorite people I have ever met was an older African American woman who used to work in the same office as me. Without that job I would have never met this wonderful person. On paper we could not have been two more different people. I am truly worried that relationships such as this will go to the wayside as we enter an increasingly virtual world.
Ciao Ciao for now
Bennie's Blasts 
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