{"id":969,"date":"2008-04-07T05:53:37","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T10:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=969"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:37:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:37:35","slug":"somebody-help-me-im-going-soft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=969","title":{"rendered":"Somebody Help Me, I&#8217;m Going Soft!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=R_pnipKOxnU\">that sappy and sickening Sheraton ad<\/a> that&#8217;s out right now, the one where archrivals suddenly discover their common humanity simply because they&#8217;re both Starwood Preferred Guests and are hanging out at the same hotel?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t look now, but something like that is happening to me.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, I didn&#8217;t take tremendous joy in the Tarheels demise like a true-Blue Duke fan should. Oh, it had its moments (especially when Psycho T <em>finally<\/em> got called for traveling), but I didn&#8217;t dig the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schadenfreude\">schadenfreude<\/a> as much as I thought I would.<\/p>\n<p>Rooting against a team and watching them lose just doesn&#8217;t produce the same buzz as pulling for a winning team. I don&#8217;t really give a rat&#8217;s patooty about Kansas, and ultimately it just didn&#8217;t matter.<\/p>\n<p>And then there was that moment when they showed Hansbrough&#8217;s dad after the game in the stands and he looked like he was about to lose it and all of a sudden I found myself actually relating to him as a human being and not just the mastermind behind <a href=\"http:\/\/i.a.cnn.net\/si\/2007\/basketball\/ncaa\/specials\/ncaa_tourney\/2007\/03\/14\/first.person0319\/p1_hansbrough.jpg\">Psycho T, Basketball Cyborg.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a fellow dad who has always gone to his sons&#8217; sporting events and cheered them on through thick and thin and stood there disappointed along with them when they&#8217;ve come up short, I understood.<\/p>\n<p>Like I said: Somebody help me, I&#8217;m going soft! Greg? JRB? Anybody?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know that sappy and sickening Sheraton ad that&#8217;s out right now, the one where archrivals suddenly discover their common humanity simply because they&#8217;re both Starwood Preferred Guests and are hanging out at the same hotel?&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,30,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-duke-basketball","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9432,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/9432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}