Doing the big dance!

I remember the days well, when the Connecticut Huskies losing to Holy Cross was just another day in the basketball season.  There was no "wait 'til next year!" it just was.  In my freshman year at Hamden High School, an athlete named Scott Burrell graduated and went on to play a big part in changing that.  First he had to turn down an offer from the Seattle Mariners.  Once past that hurdle, he joined a UCONN Husky squad that included Chris Smith, Tate George and Nadav Henefeld.  They would go 31-6, collecting a Big East Conference Championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight, eventually falling to tournament runner up Duke.  That was a year where whoever went to the finals would have to face a UNLV team that was and may still be unrivaled.  But for those of us in Connecticut, this will be the crowning moment for the year that truly gave birth to Husky-mania:



To us, what would later happen in 1999, 2004, and 2011 was only a matter of time; and none of us doubted it.

"I miss the comfort of being sad......"

Hard to believe it was 20 years ago that so much potential ended as abruptly as it began.  The whole world was forced to take notice just 3 years prior and just like that, music was taken out of its 80's comfort zone, and hitting the road on what promised to be a wild journey with an unknown destination or ETA.  I was a product of the 80's who wasn't very impressed with what passed for popular music the first time I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit."  I was 17 years old and hanging out with a couple of high school buddies at a pool hall when it came on.  I hated heavy metal music at that time, and the guys I was with and I sometimes cut up on headbanger stereotypes when the mood struck us or we were just plain bored.  I didn't want to admit that I might like the song. I also didn't know that it wasn't heavy metal, at least not the way I knew it at the time.  It wasn't long before I bought 'Nervermind' and I along with everyone my age was craving more.  We didn't have to look hard.  Soon 'Teen Spirit' was next to songs called 'Outshined' and 'Even Flow' on the tapes I was making to play in the car. 

Whatever it was called, grunge, alternative, punk,