The Cinderella ad featuring JT III may have been tempting fate, but at least it doesn’t make me feel a little uncomfortable. That’s more than this Sheraton ad, specifically the Georgetown/Syracuse section (0:23-0:29), can say. I can’t imagine what the Sheraton executives were thinking when the approved this. Putting aside the bizarre nature of having someone you just met wipe away dressing from the side of your mouth, the Georgetown fan’s whole face was covered with dressing, so it’s not like there was any real purpose to the ‘Cuse fan’s tender action. Vaguely homoerotic, 100% disturbing, this ad never fails to give me the creeps when it comes on during timeouts in the NCAA tourney. Georgetown needs to do a better job of controlling how its image is used, specifically when it comes to ads like this one.

• In our cover story, Anna Bank writes about a college in D.C. that counts Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and outgoing Dean of Georgetown College Jane McAuliffe among its alums.  And you’ve probably never even heard of it.  Take a look inside Trinity Washington College.
• DPS officers are going to be packing a little more of a punch in a few days, Juliana Brint reports, and by punch, I mean mace and batons.  (Whoever can guess what the Ed Board thinks about this wins a big shiny penny.)
• In teenage relationships, the average time that the relationship lasts after sex is introduced is two weeks.  Or at least, that’s what Miss Wisconsin told Molly Redden during her Catholic high school’s abstinence-only sex ed.
• Their “bats are coming alive“: Hoya softball knocked off two on Tuesday and Wednesday, Tony Francavilla reports.
• Sonnet Gaertner spent the week taste-testing all the veggie burgers in the Georgetown area so you don’t have to.
• The Ed Board gives GUSA Pres Pat Dowd and VP James Kelly a tip of the hat and a wag of the finger, all in the same ed!  And they said it couldn’t be done!

Until next week, you know where to find it.

For those looking to get their hallucinations on, the recently reopened Dixie Liquor is hosting an absinthe demonstration/tasting tomorrow from 4-7 p.m. As far as I can tell, or at least according to the New York Times, the absinthe they’ll be serving, Lucid, sounds pretty legit. The makers of Lucid managed to get around the U.S.’s ban on absinthe by omitting thujone, a chemical in modern absinthe, the Times says, which Lucid’s absinthe chemist claims wasn’t even a big part of old-school absinthe. From the Times:

Mr. Breaux knew that removing thujone entirely might harm the taste. “I had to get a handle on the whole thujone issue without compromising the character and the flavor of the drink,” he said. To accomplish this, Mr. Breaux blended the grand wormwood with green anise and sweet fennel from Europe, instead of using more-affordable imports from East Asia. Using herbs from Europe, absinthe’s native continent, he said, gives the drink an earthier essence.

Mr. Breaux also had to keep the American palate in mind while developing Lucid. “In the U.S., anise is a sort of a strange flavor,” he said. “We don’t get a lot of exposure to it.” So Mr. Breaux made sure that Lucid had a slightly cleaner, crisper taste than its European peers.

I’m not much for the flavor of anise, but if I were (and if I were 21), I’d probably be hitting this up tomorrow. Hallucinations aside, Lucid is 62% alcohol, so if you do end up going, watch out for yourself.

Photo courtesy www.drinklucid.com

There may not have been 967 attendees, like Facebook had promised me, but no small number of people showed up today in Dupont Circle to take part in D.C.’s Pillow Fight 2008 (part of World Pillow Fight Day). That is, if you include not just those participating in the pillow fight, but also those just there to watch and the countless people there to document it with their video recorders and slick SLR cameras. (I, regrettably, am forced to count myself among this last group.)

When I arrived in Dupont Circle just after 2 p.m., people were milling about in clusters, awkwardly clutching their pillows. One of the organizers blew a whistle and the 50 or so people who had come to rumble gradually formed a mob on the northeast side of the circle, squinting their eyes and slamming away at each other. The participants ranged from young high schoolers to college students to self-consciously hip 20-somethings.

Some of the comments I heard from these hipsters regarding how uncool yet cool they were to be fighting with high schoolers: “I hope college is going to be this fun! We should organize it a pillow fight in college too! We could have it on the quad!” and “Is it illegal to hit a seventeen year-old girl with a pillow? I’ll ask Bill—he’s a lawyer.”

It wasn’t all fun and games, mind you. World Pillow Fight Day, part of the “urban playground movement,” according to their website, has loftier ambitions than that.

One of our goals is to make these unique happenings in public space become a significant part of popular culture, partially replacing passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television, and consciously rejecting the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space.

So it’s hip and socially conscious! Looks like the only ones losing out were the birds who donated all that lovely down.

Let’s hope, at least for John McCain’s sake, that being able to fill out a halfway-decent bracket isn’t a reliable indicator of presidential ability. According to an article from the Canadian Press, McCain has Kansas, Memphis, UNC and Connecticut in the Final Four, with UNC winning it all. For those who haven’t been keeping up with March Madness, the fourth-seeded Huskies were upset yesterday by a tenacious San Diego team, one of the two thirteen seeds to score a big upset yesterday. (Siena also knocked off a four seed in Vanderbilt.) Sorry, John.

Obama also made the safe (and boring, if you ask me) choice of UNC to win it all, with Kansas, UCLA, and Pittsburgh rounding out his Final Four. A fairly balanced slate—three one seeds and a four seed to spice things up. I think Obama’s onto something choosing Pitt, too. If the Fields-Young-Blair trio keeps playing like it has been in the past few games, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s prediction of some Final Four Panther-action turns out to be right.

Lastly, we have Bill Clinton, who sees Georgetown making it to the Final Four but no further. Clinton also chose North Carolina, Memphis and UCLA for the Final Four. “My heart’s with Georgetown,” he said, according to the Canadian Press article, “but my head tells me it’s going to be Carolina or Memphis.” A fair number of Hoya fans seem to share Clinton’s attitude, at least from what I’ve seen. They want Georgetown to win, but don’t believe it’s going to happen.

I’m not going to argue with those fans—Tyler Hansborough is indisputably a beast, Memphis is a squad to be reckoned with, etc.—but I will say this. Watching some of Georgetown’s sub-par performances (Big East final, anyone?), your head might be telling you that the Hoyas can’t go all the way. But if there was a time when you need to abandon the logic of your right brain for the fanhood of your left brain, now would be that time.  And if the first round taught us anything (two 12-13 match-ups in the round of 32?  really?), it’s that the most obvious choices aren’t always the right ones.

Jon Wallace and Roy Hibbert each had 13 points as the Hoyas defeated the undersized UMBC Retrievers 66-47. Unlike the Duke-Belmont game, there was never any real possibility of an elusive 15-2 upset, but the Hoyas’ play was a bit sloppier than it should be for a team that wants to make a repeat trip to the Final Four. Hopefully they’ll bring their A-game on Sunday when they face off against 10 seed Davidson.

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

According to a study released on Monday, Georgetown graduates 82% of its basketball players, clocking in at thirteenth among the 65 teams in the NCAA tournament. The report, released by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, was based upon 2000-01 graduation (six-year) statistics released by the NCAA.

The main fact that jumps out of the study is the disparity between African-American and white basketball player graduation rates, an average of 33% among all the teams (22% for Georgetown). The problem isn’t just among basketball players, though. Dr. Richard Lapchick, the primary author of the study, pointed out. “African-American basketball players graduate at a higher rate than African-American males who are not student-athletes,” he said in the study.  “Too many of our predominantly white campuses are not welcoming places for students of color, whether or not they are athletes.”

Some other notes:

• The Final Four according to graduation rates would be Butler, Notre Dame, Purdue and Western Kentucky.
• Among the eight Big East teams in the study, Georgetown ranks fourth after Marquette, Notre Dame and ‘Nova.
• American University, our D.C. neighbor playing in its first NCAA tourney, has the second worst graduation rate with an abysmal 18%.
• Among all the 1 and 2 seeds, Georgetown has the second highest graduation rate after UNC, which has a graduation rate of 86%.  (Unfortunately for UNC, Graduation rates don’t win championships;  2007 Elite Eight, anyone?) Tennessee and Texas, clocking in at 33%, are tied for last place.

h/t ESPN.com

I just bought a ticket to New York City (the first leg of my trip home to Connecticut) aboard BoltBus, the newest arrival on the DC-NYC bus scene, and it felt great. BoltBus’s claim to fame is its ridiculously cheap $1 tickets; even with a service fee, my ticket cost me a mere $1.50. The catch? BoltBus offers very few $1 tickets for each ride, so you’ve got to book way in advance to snag the tickets before the prices jump up to $7, 10, or more. (After I bought my ticket, the price for the same bus shot up to $7.)  My ticket’s for May 10, an approximate date for when I might want to go home, based on my exam schedule. It’s still two months away, which makes the ticket a bit of a gamble, but for $1.50, I’d bet on pretty much anything.

BoltBus’s $7 or $10 fares are still a steal. Even the bargain Chinatown buses like Apex or Today charge $20, or $17.50 if you buy round-trip. (Incidentally, they also smell a bit off, offer horrible service and are notoriously unreliable. I swore them off  after the last one I took left New York a solid two and a half hours after it was supposed to.) Unlike the Chinatown buses, BoltBus also has wi-fi and electrical outlets so you can surf all the way up the eastern seaboard.  What more could you ask for?

I’d advise anyone who’s traveling anywhere remotely close to New York after school gets out to buy a ticket right now. Even if your plans change and you end up not using it, the thrill alone of buying a bus ticket for $1.50 is practically worth the $1.50.

• The song Afternoon Delight is about, among other things, an appetizer from Clyde’s of Georgetown.  This and other fun facts in Jeff Reger’s cover featuring Georgetown professors Bill Danoff (the writer of Afternoon Delight) and Walter Egan, who had a hit himself with Magnet and Steel.
• Tim Fernholz is in the market for some Catholic justice, the upshot being, he says, Iraq war architect and Georgetown professor Douglas Feith has got to go.
• With the Big East Tournament underway and the Big Dance on the horizon, the Sports section is (almost) all basketball.  Tony Francavilla has a web exclusive on the beating ‘Nova took this afternoon, Phil Perry channels former Hoyas who chose to finish their four years elsewhere, Joseph Richman gives a tip of the hat to DaJuan Summers and Liz Kuebler bigs up JT III.
• Juliana Brint continues her stellar GUSA coverage as Pat is sworn in with ambitious plans for free summer housing, a new alcohol policy and lunch.  A little too ambitious, if you ask me.
• Mask & Bauble gets inside G.W. Bush’s head in the winner of their one act play contest and, Ryan May Handy says, it’s both witty and brief.  (You can buy tickets here.)
• The Editorial Board tells the National Park Service to clean up its act (and the National Mall).

I’m off to watch the second half of the Pitt-Louisville game.  It’s 31-33 right now with Pitt behind, but I smell an upset.

Jeff Reger takes us back a few decades this week in his cover story on musicians/songwriters/Georgetown professors Walter Egan and Bill Danoff. In case you haven’t read the cover and are wondering who Egan and Danoff are, no worries: just let YouTube fill you in (and then go read the cover).

Egan’s hit 1978 single “Magnet and Steel” was produced by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac and went on to sell over a million copies. In the video, Egan is rolling six deep and sporting an outfit that could only be described as transplendent (or something).

This next song, written by Danoff, thanks largely to Will Farrell and Mitchell Hurtwitz, needs little introduction. Danoff is the lead singer in the video, wearing a black tux and a pretty boss ‘do.

I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t post either an Arrested Development or Anchorman video along with this. (Unfortunately, videos of Michael and Maeby’s tender duet are in short supply on the interweb.) Video after the jump.

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