Gheorghasbord: From Wieners to Cocks

Hope your respective weekends were good. Just a few tidbits to keep the good gheorghies tuning in and the postcount up.

Tubesteaks have dominated the discussion here for a while. Frankfurters, I mean. Question(s)for you...

1. Do the meats in the video below count as hot dogs?
2. Any interest among the gheorghies?
3. Is there some shortage of wiener buns?

On a related note, 6 years ago this article muddied the waters on an ongoing debate of whether a hot dog is a sandwich: National Hot Dog and Sausage Council Announces Official Policy On ‘Hot Dog as Sandwich’ Controversy.  The long and short of it was that they claim that hot dogs are in their own category and therefore not lumped into the sandwich category. But check out the USDA Regulatory Definitions of a Sandwich in that link.  Thoughts?

30 years ago a few of our guys went through a parallel debate of whether a BLT is a sandwich, with the non-obvious argument throwing its eggs into the "bacon is a topping not a primary meat" basket. This one wasn't and isn't much of a debate, but I certainly enjoyed the ridiculous banter that it offered a while back.

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It was once written, "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." New York is the epicenter of everywhere anywhere (just as a New Yorker; they'll tell ya). First in business, first in fashion, last in the American League. Meanwhile, rob's Red Sox are in first place, even as he sandbagged our annual case o' beer bet and has the Sox +10 wins versus the modestly Amazin' Mets. Conventional wisdom says those spots will be reversed by Memorial Day, but one never knows...

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QB Alex Smith retired today. Much will be said about him, and hyperbole will abound, as is de rigueur, but what he did to come back from a gruesome injury and subsequent infections cannot be overstated. He faced amputation and played a couple years later in meaningful NFL contests. His acquisition set the WFT back a costly bit, as it turned out, but the team's fans are Alex Smith fans all the way.

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Speaking of football, I have twice as much incentive to get to an SEC game this summer. My younger daughter came to the end of her miserable run during the college admission process. It's been a rough road for her and for her peers because of a few factors:

• Would-be rising sophomores from last year who took a gap year and are coming back. According to at least one admission office, one-quarter of their freshman slots were taken by this population, so this year's crop of kids were starting off short-handed.
• The SAT wasn't a requirement this year. My daughter did well (highest in the extended family), so this would have helped her. Instead, it saturated the candidate pool.
• With the effect the pandemic has had on the economy, large state schools (the relative bargains) have been flooded with applications. My girl applied nearly exclusively to large state schools.
• Among other things working against her, some recent grads from her high school were embroiled in a cheating scandal at UVa; that and a progressive push from colleges for DEI and a new era of wokeness did not help the students at this decidedly unwoke preparatory school. Sounds like there's a shake-up a-brewing at Norfolk Academy, though enough of the Board of Trustees all have MAGA stickers on their Bentleys and Range Rovers that it's not a given. I do know that when a high school is more expensive than a number of the colleges for which it offers tutelage and trajectory into, its numero uno metric is college acceptance, and when that ebbs mightily, look the fuck out.
• At least in these parts, it's just been a crappy year to try to get into colleges... and to be a senior. All the fun stuff and privileges have been cancelled, virtual learning sucked, in-person learning was definitely not the same, and now the process of moving forward has been disappointing at best. A friend who's a UPenn alum sits on interview panels for local applicants. He said that they usually have an acceptance rate of 9% to 14% of the kids they see. This year they interviewed 98 applicants. 1 got in. 

So... bad luck for my daughter and her peeps. All that said, she's going to college! That's more than many people across many years could say! She came to a decision late last week, and we're happy for her.

Maddie will be joining her sister in Columbia as a Gamecock for the University of South Carolina. 

I'm happy for a variety of reasons. She's done and moving on with the next chapter in her life. The first place she thought she might want to go when this process began was USC. She only had reservations because the cat left the bag and a lot of her schoolmates loudly announced how much they wanted to go there, when she wanted an element of getting away from much of what (and who) she'd known before for a new adventure. 

I'm especially happy because my two daughters really are great friends as much as sisters, and they want the experience of going to college together. I definitely don't take that for granted. Plus, now I can see them twice as often on my college visits. And it's a bargain.  Oh, and football.

As football comes back in earnest for attending fans, I am looking to join the fray. November is a fun month at Williams-Brice Stadium; Clemson finishes off the regular season there. Before that, Auburn comes in looking for revenge. And before that, the Gators hit town on Nov. 6. Already starting to make plans.

Go Cocks.