Category: NMSU

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Have you ever known a place that, in your memories, takes on a dream quality?

It can be almost any place. I have lots of them.

But one that shows up in my dreams quite often is this really greasy spoon in Las Cruces. A college hangout. Oh did I have some fun times there, and the tasty green chile cheese burgers that still haunt me.

That place is called Dick’s Cafe.

It’s a place with plastic windows covered with a greasy film. It has torn vinyl seats and ugly formica tables. The desert sun pours in through those windows, lighting up the room and the grimy linoleum floor.

And there is a jukebox. Oh that jukebox. I used to ask cute cowboys for their pocket change and they would give it to me. My best friend and I would play our faves. And we smiled, and laughed, and told stories and picked on each other and occasionally picked up on each other. It is genuinely the stuff of my dreams. All the individual memories blended together into one beautiful and happy amalgam.

When visiting Las Cruces, my pulse still quickens driving past Dick’s. Back in the day, we would drive by real slow and survey the pickups parked out front. My best friend and I had a game, how many could we recognize. She was always better than me at that, but if we saw a good one, one belonging to a good friend or a particularly cute boy that needed to be flirted with, we’d turn in to the dirt parking lot and grab a coke and some fries. The days went by slow and easy then.

What’s great is that Dick’s has been around since 1959. My best friend’s parents, my surrogate Mom and Dad, have just as fond memories about Dick’s as we do. THAT is an institution, people!

Why am I waxing rhapsodic about Dick’s today?

Because I just read in the Las Cruces Sun News that they had a fire overnight. Article here.

If the physical place is gone, it can live on in my memories. But it would be a sad day for me to have to say goodbye to the actual place.

Just writing this, remembering the days, makes me smile. Fridays at Dick’s were especially fun.

An urgent email went out to my best friend who still lives in Las Cruces for some on the scene reporting…

Sportsmanship! Feh!

From today’s Las Cruces Sun News:

“The Western Athletic Conference has issued a warning to all WAC members that any pre-meditated chants that contain vulgar or offensive language will result in a technical foul called against the home team.”

(full article)

You know what, that fine Aggie tradition of shouting “Nice shot, ass–le” at basketball games dates back to my college years. Like, uh, back to the early 90’s.

I started out this blog post going to rant about the demolition of a tradition. But actually, that crowd chant was pretty juvenile back in ’91 (which was why it was fun), but it’s probably time to move it along to something new. And even more juvenile.

Not sure I buy into a Technical Foul to the home team. That’s an expensive penalty, and how are they supposed to corral their own fans, anyway? I guess when the fans lose a game because of the T, they’ll pipe down.

So ok. It’s lame that the WAC is governing this NOW, some twenty years later. They really should have gotten in front of it back then. I mean, you can *hear* it on television! Seems hard to curb this now. But ok, it’s part of the rules now.

So I’ll let this one go. But I’ll *never* let go of the grand SF Giants fans in the bleachers tradition of “what’s the matter with < insert name of opposing team's outfielder here >??……He’s. A. BUM!”

What would Funk and Wagnall say?

Heard on local radio talk show yesterday morning and confirmed via the AP and the Albuquerque Tribune, the Word of the Year for 2007 is:

w00t!

Yup.

Now, who am I to complain? I’m a big fan of the word. It peppers my personal emails, has made an appearance in this very blog (and here and here and….uh a few more times too….). But I’m not sure the word is Miriam-Webster worthy.

How do I feel about this? I sort of don’t like it when a slang word is legitimized. I mean…doesn’t that take some of the fun away? I love words, I really do, I’m a certified linguaphile (*wink*) but I also really love made up words. My best friend and I have a vocabulary all our own. It’s fun to bastardize words. And w00t is fun because the letters and numbers make it a word that’s not quite a word, but heck, even if you’ve never seen the word, you can get the joyous meaning when you see: w00t!!

It’s word that means what it sounds like.

If I recall my English teacher’s hardworking edumacation, that would be an onomatopoeia.

There’s my nickel word for the week. (NMSU grad in the hizz house, w00t!)

Today, it’s w00t, tomorrow it’s teh…before you know it STFU will be a part of the formal lexicon. I want to know when w00t shows up on a kid’s spelling test….

Anyhow, best to just end this post with a w00t! for the selection of w00t! as the word of the year.

Link via.

Aggies oh Aggies!

Being a proud graduate of New Mexico State University means that where I live now, I am subject to blank looks when I respond to the “so, where did you go to school” question (it’s oddly a big deal out here).

Occasionally I get hacked on. And it also means, that still, some fifteen years since donning a cap and gown, I still feel rather bitter about the < expletive deleted > Lobos. As the chant from the Pan Am Center goes, “Luck the Fobos”

So today, while sitting in a boring ass meeting with hostile senior executives of the company that owns my ass, I had occasion to surf over to the ABQJournal. And I smiled.

Headline reads: “Aggies Dominate Inside, Give UNM Second Loss“.

See, three days ago, the women’s basketball team whomped up on the Fobos (thus breaking a string of twenty-two losses in a row) and then last night, the boys followed suit, issuing a 71-62 beating. Yeah, baby!

I know they get to do it again in a couple weeks (this time at The Pit(s) and that is always tough), but for now just let me gloat.

With little to be happy about (the Aggies are 4-6 so far this year) I’ll take this bit of joy.

It’s important to stop and give thanks for the nice things. Smell the roses, so to speak….drink a beer to my alma mater.

W00t!

Ok, back to work, but here’s the tune I’m humming as I walk to the next building for the next ridiculous meeting.

__________________________

Aggies, Oh Aggies
The hills send back the cry
We’re here to do or die
Aggies, Oh Aggies
We’ll win this game or know the reason why
And when we win this game
We’ll buy a keg of booze
And we’ll drink to the Aggies
Till we wobble in our shoes
A-G-G-I-E-S
Aggies, Aggies, go Aggies
Aggies, Oh Aggies
The hills send back the cry
We’re here to do or die
Aggies, Oh Aggies
We’ll win this game or know the reason why

Aggies, oh Aggies!

The hills send back the cry
we’re here to do or die
Aggies, oh Aggies!
we’ll when this game or know the reason why

And when we win this game, we’ll buy a keg of booze
And we’ll drink it to the Aggies ’til we wobble in our shoes!

This is the actual fight song of my alma mater. I always rather enjoyed that our fight song mentioned getting drunk. It was always rather…appropriate, in my humble opinion.

When I was in school (lo these many years ago) we enjoyed being the losingest football team in the NCAA, having lost 27 in a row. The streak was broken in a 1990 win in which we tore down the goal posts. I remember. I was at that game.

We even make an ESPN list of worst college football teams of all time (scroll down, we’re number 9).

Today the Las Cruces Sun News is reporting that the 2007 NMSU football season has kicked off with a win over Southeastern Louisiana. The boys in crimson won it 35-14, including a 68 yard interception for a touchdown by a 273 pound defensive….who was gassed after making the run.

It’s an auspicious start for a generally crappy football team.

Gives me something to smile and whistle about leading into a long Labor Day Weekend.

Now to see about buying that keg of booze and commencing the wobbling…..