This Is How We Jardieu It

The ball is tipped.
And there you are.
You're running for your life.
You're a shooting star.
- My nightly lullaby in the mirror during March

This year marked the first year in about 15 that I haven't filled out a bracket. In related news, there's been a harsh decline of crying in the corner of my cubicle with a wastebasket fire, incinerating any record of picking Texas A&M to win it all.

So I didn't fill out a bracket this year. There's a few reasons why - 'being busy' is the biggest. But I also haven't had cable for about 2 years, which severely hinders my ability to become as involved in college basketball as I'd like to be.

It doesn't matter. College basketball, especially in March, really is like a drug. Despite a lack of fandom throughout the regular season, once the ball is tipped in those first games, I'm glued to my TV, buzzing with excitement.


No matter how uninvolved in the day to day of college basketball or the NBA I become, …

I used to listen to Incubus.

CORRECTION: I had the band's decal on my '97 Honda Civic.  I used to love Incubus.


In high school, I was all about Incubus and Rage and Tool. Now my playlist consists of Wilco and LCD Soundsystem and Kendrick and on and on.

So what happened? Did I become a music elitist? A lot of my friends say yes. Well, I am here to stand tall and defiantly exclaim no, not really. 

I didn't stop listening to Incubus because they became popular. I stopped listening to them because A Crow Left of The Murder was terrible. And all of their releases since then have gone in a direction I didn't care for.

Simply put - Incubus started making music I didn't like.

If anything, my music appreciation is now continuously expanding. In high school, I never would have listened to a Loretta Lynn album or admitted to blasting Honky Chateau by myself. But a lot of the people claiming others are 'elitists' are stuck listening to Top 40, rarely branching to genr…