Each February, the ESPN mothership in Bristol, Conn., dictates one week in the college basketball season as “Rivalry Week.” The games over that particular stretch of days contain some of the biggest and baddest conference match-ups in the nation. Typically, North Carolina against Duke in one featured game, Kentucky and Florida in another, perhaps Syracuse meeting Connecticut, too. But few of these games really ratchet things up to 11. You may see a cut chin or some yapping, but the stakes for really getting into it with a conference foe, especially late in the year when NCAA seeding and participation and jockeying for conference preeminence are at the forefront of everyone’s minds, are too high for the real hate to flow.

It’s in the pre-conference season that the ancient blood feuds really play out. The lack of a second chance at your bitter non-conference rival means you only get one shot for a year’s worth of bragging rights. This past week provided a highly entertaining and even in one case a shocking look at a few of these squabbles, and the lessons learned from the outcomes are sure to be lasting, particularly in Cincinnati.

Xavier-Cincinnati
One of these two programs plays in the nation’s most hyped, discussed, televised and fawned over conference — the other plays in the Atlantic 10. That Cincinnati, the school in the big-time conference, has been mostly an NCAA afterthought in recent years while the smaller one, Xavier, has become a tournament regular and a media darling fuels this annual basketball feud.

Cincinnati has been struggling to regain its foothold in the college game since former coach Bob Huggins was fired in 2006. Last season’s NCAA tournament appearance was UC’s first since. Meanwhile, over that same period, Xavier has been to three Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight. Maybe more significantly, despite its lower profile conference, Xavier has been the more highly regarded program, a fact that certainly rankles the Bearcats and their fans. Throw in a public-private school grudge and the fact that Xavier won four of the previous five Crosstown Shootouts heading into this season’s tilt and you have the makings for some bad blood.

And bad blood is exactly what was shed on Saturday when the two teams finished off a 23-point drubbing by Xavier with a full-on brawl of the kind you don’t often see in basketball, and certainly not at the college level. Emotions were already running high and the humiliation and frustration felt by the Bearcats was evident. They’ve struggled this season already, losing a couple of games they shouldn’t have, and Xavier has been puffing its chest out behind its national Player of the Year candidate Tu Holloway.

The ending was unfortunate as it shows the bad edge of sports rivalry, when it turns personal and vicious. There’s no place for it. This rivalry, already a physical and emotional game each season, didn’t need to take it to the next level.

Indiana-Kentucky
Heading into this season’s edition of the annual border clash between Kentucky and Indiana, one much-discussed topic was whether this rivalry was one even worth continuing. After all, Kentucky came into Saturday’s game having won five of the last six meetings and nine of the previous 11. When Kentucky coach John Calipari took to social media to ask fans what rivalry game they would prefer to lose should that be necessary, the Indiana series was the runaway choice to die.

No one is talking about that anymore. Not after Hoosiers forward Christian Watford nailed a three-pointer at the final horn to stun Kentucky, 73–72, and send the IU faithful pouring onto the court.

Indiana has been rebuilding behind coach Tom Crean, and it’s been tough sledding. For a program as rich in tradition as Indiana, finishing dead last in the Big Ten is humiliating. Still, give Hoosiers fans credit. They’ve been patient as Crean has taken the slow build approach, fielding scrappy teams that hustle but lack talent, and hitting the recruiting trail. It’s finally paid off, as this season Crean welcomed his first blue chipper in local kid Cody Zeller.

After the Billy Gillispie debacle, Kentucky has been rebuilding too — in true Kentucky style, paying Calipari a king’s ransom to get the Wildcats back in the national title hunt immediately. And he has. Kentucky came into the game ranked No. 1 in the country and boasted the nation’s best recruiting class, the likely No. 1 pick in next season’s NBA draft in freshman Anthony Davis. On the UK bench are any number of guys who could start for Indiana.

Crean’s team played smart and hard, outhustling the taller and more athletic Wildcats for much of the game. Kentucky nearly still pulled out the game when its talent finally started to make the difference. UK freshman Marquis Teague — an Indianapolis native who spurned the Hoosier — repeatedly blew by his defender as the Wildcats caught up to and took a late lead over Indiana. But missed free throws doomed Kentucky, who couldn’t finish the game off and paid the price when Watford’s shot was true. Here’s guessing Kentucky fans will no longer be so eager to cancel the series, especially as next year’s game will be played in Lexington.

Temple-Villanova
Neither Temple University nor Villanova is a world-beater this season, but this installment of the two programs’ annual Big Five game was still illuminating. And any of the games between the five schools that make up the Philadelphia Big Five warrant inclusion on this list.

Temple Coach Fran Dunphy is a no-frills guy, and his Owls teams have mirrored that trait. Never flashy, built to rebound and play stout defense and be opportunistic on offense, Temple’s margin for error is never big. The Owls play in the Atlantic 10 and get a fraction of the national attention Big East member Villanova does. In recent months, there had been talk of the Big East adding Temple as a member, a move that Villanova has come out publicly against, much to the consternation of Temple followers.

The reasons are obvious. The money and prestige that come with BCS-level conference affiliation help Villanova recruit, and the school has been stocking up on McDonald’s All-Americans for the last half-decade while Temple has more often had to go overseas or take guys who are talented but raw or underappreciated and hungry.

This season, ‘Nova has experienced a changing of the guard. Gone are several staples of the last few seasons, replaced by three highly regarded but less seasoned players: Maalik Wayns, Mouphtao Yarou and Dominic Cheek. Of the three, only Wayns averaged in double figures last season. All three were big recruits and possess professional talent. Still, the Wildcats have been uncharacteristically mediocre so far this season.

On Saturday, Temple guard Ramone Moore, a fifth-year senior from Philly, scored a career-high 32 points — double his career output vs. Villanova — as Temple beat its Big Five rival, 78–67.

But while the players were focused on basketball, much of the background vitriol was left to the home fans at the Liacouras Center. At times during the game, Owls fans unfurled banners reading, “You’re scared to make this a conference game!” and “Villainova.” One sign summed up the sentiment most simply: “This is our City!”

VCU-Richmond
Last March, city rivals Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth both made trips to the Sweet 16. Coming off as unlikely a Final Four run as any you’ll see in college basketball, VCU has accomplished the rare feat of retaining the young, fiery head coach that got it there. Shaka Smart, just 34 years old, had options to jump to a bigger program and a higher profile position — not to mention enjoy a major salary boost — but ultimately decided to stay where he was. His loyalty was rewarded with a new and better contract.

Smart’s program has lost a few players since its Final Four run, and this season has already seen a few bumps in the road. The Rams lean heavily on their lone senior, Bradford Burgess. After struggling to get a quality win earlier this season, Virginia Commonwealth has now run off three straight over decent competition.

Chris Mooney was considered a coach on the hot seat at Richmond just a few seasons ago. But after the best two-year stretch in Richmond basketball history — 50 wins and a Sweet 16 appearance — Mooney, like Smart, was handed a huge contract extension to stay put. But as with the Rams, many of the players from that Sweet 16 squad have left the program — including its top three scorers and top two rebounders — replace by mostly untested former role players and freshmen.

This year’s game was tight for a while, with Richmond rallying to within two at 47–45, before Burgess and the Rams went on a big run to blow the game open. Like Xavier and Cincinnati, these two schools are not just rivals but intra-city rivals in different conferences, which amps the intensity a notch. With both fan bases coming off historic seasons, not at all lost on the home faithful was the fact that VCU had toppled Kansas in the Elite Eight to reach their first Final Four last March a round after Richmond had been unable to beat the Jayhawks, leading the crowd at the Siegel Center to chant “Just like Kansas” as the final seconds rolled off the clock in VCU’s 73–51 victory.

All fair game, and in good fun, and just the kind of localized intensity college basketball’s pre-conference rivalries provide.

Originally from Kentucky, Joshua Lars Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on things can be found at Agonica and on Twitter.

Photo by Aspen Photo, via Shutterstock.

“Babyloid, Japan’s latest therapeutic robot baby, is also designed to help ease depression among older people by keeping them company. Towards the middle of its round, silicone face are two black dots that act as blinking eyes and a small slit that poses as a mouth and that can produce a smile. The cheeks have LED lights embedded and turn red to signify when it Babyloid contented. Blue LED tears are produced when it is unhappy…. Babyloid knows what’s going on through its acceleration, temperature, touch, pyroelectric and light sensors. If you hold the crying Babyloid and rock it, it might — if you’re lucky — fall asleep.”

Comedian Louis C.K. is answering questions over at Reddit. Also, his new special is available now. You should probably get it.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about death. The triggering event, appropriately, involved cigarettes; the store in which I attempted to procure a new pack only had my brand in soft pack. I mean, yes, I could have gotten 100s, but I always feel like I am done smoking 100s before the cigarette itself is finished and then there’s that awkward moment where you stand there self-consciously smoking a cigarette in which you are no longer interested and the cigarette itself feels bad because it’s not its fault that they made it longer than the normal cigarette and what kind of cigarette wants to be smoked by someone who is ambivalent at best about finishing it anyway? Also it knows that soon it will be thrust to the ground and stepped on to be extinguished forever. It’s a nasty, brutal and short life for a cigarette, even a long one. But I digress.

So, desperate as I was to get that delicious smoke into my lungs, I said yes to the soft pack option. If you have ever done something similar, you know how it turned out. The cigarettes were difficult to retrieve from the stupid slot you make at the top, and, as the day wore on the pack took more and more of a pounding so by the time I got around to addressing the few remaining smokes they were in terrible condition: bent, frazzled and in one case actually torn to the point where I had to remove the filter entirely and smoke it the other way around, which is largely unsatisfying and makes you look like some kind of low-level thug, a particularly unattractive appearance for a man who is approaching forty with astonishing celerity.

So I was standing on the street, smoking my improvised unfiltered cigarette in a state of extreme disgruntlement, complaining to myself about the unfairness of it all. Why, I moaned internally, do they even MAKE soft packs? Why not stick with the beauty of the box, a thing in which form and function effortlessly combine? Then I recalled an explanation from decades previous, in which a friend, posing the same question to the proprietor of a local smoke shop, was informed that soft packs are preferred by those who regularly wear suits, the lines of which are apparently unable to overcome the sharp angles of the box.

Now, I am not the type of person, thank God, who needs to wear a suit — most days, my attire consists of jeans and whatever was once hot at The Gap but made its inevitable migration to the bottom floor where all the sad sale items come to live out the end of their retail careers — but I do own one. And this mental disquisition on the state of the soft pack put me in mind of my own suit, about which this terrible thought flashed through my mind: From now on this suit will see many more funerals than weddings. It is just a fact of life. More people I know will die than get married going forward. The final funeral, I thought to myself, will be my own, but then I remembered that I have left specific instructions that when I pass on my body is to be burned and the resulting dust blasted into space so there are no earthly remains with which to trouble nature by reminding it of my existence.

Death itself is not at all worrisome to me; it’s the sad deaccumlation of details that lead up to the process that I find so troubling. With each funeral to which I wear that suit I am losing one more person in my life, one more friend or relative who remembered me when I was younger and more enthusiastic about things. As we age, we grow dull and fearful, resentful of the vibrance of the generations which succeed us. Having once been of the up-and-coming generation it is a terrible thing to know that your time has passed, that those younger than you now look upon you as a cautionary tale at best and a grim reminder of their own mortality at worst. They mock you for your inability to understand and appreciate the things that come as second nature to them.

Take, for example, this video of someone’s grandfather listening to Skrillex. If you are like me, you have no idea what Skrillex is, and even the explanations provided by the kids today offer no succor. In days past I would have laughed at this grandpa, his angry bafflement at the sounds of the new. But now I can only weep, for I know that I am that grandpa. Maybe not yet exactly, but soon. I can only clench my fists in rage to realize that where once I would have been the young man playing the music, it is not long before I will be the old man reacting to it with distaste. The only redeeming thing I can think about it is that, no matter how young you are now, someday so will you. We are all that grandpa. It’s just a question of how much time it’s going to take us to get there. I suppose death, when it finally comes, will be something of a relief.

Anyway, soft packs really suck is what I was trying to say. I am not making that mistake again.

Has Rick Perry Set U.S.-Solynda Relations Back 50 Years?

by Simon Dumenco

After Texas governor and U.S. presidential candidate Rick Perry criticized the Obama administration for sending $500 million of aid to the country Solynda, disturbing new details about his attitudes toward ethnic Solyndans have emerged.

Speaking at a campaign event in Iowa on Sunday, Perry said that he was in favor of cutting all “subsidies or however you refer to them” to Solynda. Within an hour of that statement, two former Perrry campaign staffers spoke off the record with The Awl to strongly condemn Perry’s take on the strategic importance of Solynda to the United States.

“Cutting aide to Solynda is not about good public policy, or smart foreign policy,” said one of those former staffers: “Rick Perry just hates Solyndans and always has.”

The former staffer cited as evidence a statement Perry purportedly made at a fundraising dinner last year: “He was talking to a donor who was saying some pretty nasty stuff about Solyndans and I remember Rick nodding and agreeing — and then saying, ‘We should just go in and burn all their filthy tent cities down and just be done with them.’ He was giggling! I was shocked.”

A second former staffer pointed out that no Solyndan-Americans have ever served in the Perry administration in the 11 years since Rick Perry became governor of Texas.

A source close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Clinton spent much of Sunday evening making a series of emergency phone calls to Solyndan officials, including Solyndan prime minister Makmesh Seechka, to reiterate the Obama adminstration’s commitment to Solynda.

“Governor Perry has set U.S.-Solynda relations back 50 years,” said that source. “They don’t know that he’s unelectable, but they do know that he’s governor of one of the biggest states in our nation and that his policy pronouncements are closely followed by the conservative political establishment.”

Clinton reportedly assured Seechka that the U.S. has no intention of recalling its ambassador to Solynda, or putting Solyndan-Americans in internment camps, two rumors that emerged on Al-Solynda, the government-run television network.

The Perry camp has not yet responded to The Awl’s repeated requests for comment.

Former Justin Beiber bureau chief for The Awl Simon Dumenco now reports from Solynda.

Winona Ryder’s Forever Sweater

Ten years ago today Winona Ryder stole several thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. I reacted to the news of the incident the way I react to most celebrity scandals — with unmitigated delight — and prepared myself to follow subsequent action with mild interest.

Then, on the day of her arraignment, a friend called me. He was very excited. (The last time I had heard him like this was during the 1994 Oscars when I called him to make fun of Susan Sarandon’s dress and he picked up the phone, having no idea who was calling or for what reason, and wailed, “I know, it’s hideous.”) His excitement was more buoyant today, less despairing. “She stole a thermal,” he said. “Winona Ryder stole a thermal.”

I knew immediately what he meant — a Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermal. “No way,” I said. Weirdly, I was living just a few miles from the incident, and he was in New York.

“How do you know?”

“How do you not know? Bye.”

I had been with this friend when I saw my first Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermal T-shirt, at the Barneys on 61st Street. He is a very good dresser, and not just in that generic gay way of like, “Girl, how cute do I look in this!” He’s more Brideshead Revisited gay than Chelsea gay. The fucker has taste. Anyway, we were in the men’s department at Barneys and he paused at a display and held up what appeared to be a soft brown shirt. “Behold this masterpiece,” he said somberly.

I gathered the thing in my hands and held it like a baby. It was so soft. It was silky. It was a sweater, not a shirt, but you could wear it like a shirt. It could be slipped on with nonchalant elegance, and was so beautiful it made you think marrying someone fat and stupid and rich would be ok, if you could just wear one of these all the time. Each delicate square of waffling was its own tiny island of sumptuous luxury. It cost a fortune — over $500. “This is a forever sweater,” I said. A clerk at Charivari — the now-defunct boutique where, coincidentally, a young Marc Jacobs worked — had once referred to a sweater I purchased there as ‘a forever sweater,’ and we found this phrase ridiculous, but not without meaning. I so wanted this object. “Why is it so perfect?” I moaned.

In the exact same tone Tom Cruise in Risky Business says, “Porsche, there is no substitute,” my friend said, “It’s perfect because it’s a Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermal T-shirt, and Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermals T-shirt are just perfect.”

We stepped out onto Madison Avenue, dizzy with desire, overcome by that experience unique to extreme youth where the humiliation of being underpaid and the belief that greatness and luxury goods are just around the corner merge into one sensation of sweet yearning. We made a pact: The first one of us to get rich would buy the other one a Marc Jacobs Thermal T-shirt.

I think this was the late mid ’90s. It might have been 2000. I do remember that at the time my favorite joke (stolen) involved looking downtown, pointing to the World Trade Center, and saying, “Hey! I thought somebody blew those things up.”

Part of me thinks I should forget about telling the next part of the story, that a big frowny face followed by an ellipse would be sufficient. At one point I thought I was rich but by the time I got around to getting us our thermals, I realized I owed the IRS so much money that my accountant, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her 70s, stood up from her desk one afternoon and shouted at me, “Your freewheeling days are over, missy.” Then my friend seemed like he may have been about to enter Thermal Country, but he got laid off. The towers fell, for real. I actually read in the paper (in addition to being stylish my friend is very discreet, funny how those go together) that he had a fancy new job and I wrote him an email, not congratulations — never congratulations — but “Where’s my thermal?”

He wrote back, “This is a good job but it’s not Thermal good.”

Not terribly long after Winona’s incident I had my brush with success. I promised my friend as soon as I got a house, I’d get us thermals. I bought my house in 2004. Needless to say a. I no longer live there and b. if you care to go through my things at the more modest place I live now you will not find a Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermal T-shirt.

About two years ago my friend and I were sitting in a bar, making the stupid jokes we make to avoid actually talking about our lives. Halfway through drink two I made a weak foray beyond senseless, apocalypse-driven repartee and said wistfully, “Someday we’ll get our thermals.”

“You actually think one day one of us is going to buy the other a Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermal T-shirt?” His eyes were large and indignant behind his Robert Marc glasses. “Are you insane? Personally, I’ll consider myself lucky if I don’t have to eat you when you die.”

I called the LA Saks Fifth Avenue the other day. Just to see if they had any. After all, what did it mean to not be able to afford something? I mean, I do have $700 dollars. So I could afford a thermal. Sure, it would be idiotic of me to buy one, but I’d been wasting money on stupid things for years, and really, why should I stop now?

“Saks Beverly Hills, can I help you?”

“The Marc Jacobs boutique, please.”

“Marc Jacobs or Marc by Marc Jacobs?”

Ma’am, I just want a thermal, I wanted to whine. But I said, “Marc Jacobs, I guess.”

“Hello, Marc Jacobs.”

“Yes, I’m wondering if you have any cashmere thermals?”

“Do you want Marc Jacobs or Marc by Marc Jacobs?”

“I’m looking for the cashmere thermals,” I said.

“I think you want Marc by Marc Jacobs.”

Before I had a chance to refute this I was transferred.

“Marc by Marc Jacobs.”

“Do you have any cashmere thermals?”

“Do you want Marc by Marc Jacobs or Marc Jacobs?”

“Either.” I said. ”I’m looking for the cashmere thermal, I guess it’s a T shirt, but then, maybe there’s another version?” Honestly, wasn’t the cashmere thermal a classic? And hadn’t it earned some kind of dark cache, like, if not exactly like, John Hinckley’s Catcher in the Rye or O.J. Simpson’s Bruno Magli suede lace-ups?

“Let me try the lingerie department.”

This seemed like an odd choice. The woman said, “Cashmere thermal? Marc Jacobs? No. Did you try Marc Jacobs or Marc for Marc Jacobs?”

I called the New York Barneys.

“Hello, Barneys New York, how may I direct your call?”

“Marc Jacobs boutique, please.”

“Marc by Marc Jacobs or Marc Jacobs?”

“How about…Marc Jacobs?”

“Hello, Marc Jacobs.”

“Hi, I’m looking for a Marc Jacobs Cashmere Thermal.”

“Marc by Marc Jacobs or Marc Jacobs?”

“I believe, uh…Marc,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “But possibly, uh…Marc for Marc Jacobs.”

“It’s not Marc and Marc for Marc Jacobs. It’s Marc Jacobs and Marc for Marc Jacobs.”

“I know what it is,” I snapped. “I could write the words in calligraphy on a grain of rice with my eyes closed. And I have to tell you I feel like I’m calling the Quicken Arena in Cleveland looking for LeBron James and everyone’s like, have you tried Concessions? What about Ticket Sales? What about the Gift Shop?”

“Call Bergdorf’s,” she said.

When you call the main number for Bergdorf’s you get a salon. (Does anyone know why?) As the phone rang and rang I had the following insight: If I, like the designer in question, were a 48-year-old extremely good looking and muscular gay man who was one day at a time never ever getting wasted again, I may also have decided that the best chance I had left for thrills in this life was to ensure that everyone who ever said my name would be forced to say it two and a half times.

I hung up. I called an actual Marc Jacobs store.

“Oh, we don’t really make those anymore. I mean, we might have like, a few of them in the men’s store, but…”

Why hadn’t I thought of this first? I don’t know.

“You don’t make them anymore?”

“The last time I saw them was like, in 2008, maybe 2009?”

“But… how could they just stop making them? They were amazing! I thought those were… are you familiar with the term ‘forever sweater’?”

“Could you hang on a moment?” She put me on hold and left me there.

It almost made me feel better for not having any money anymore. Clothes are so ugly now. Everything has a ruffle or a bow. It makes you wonder if maybe Leona Helmsley’s Maltese, Trouble, used all that money she left her to go to FIT and open a boutique. Of course Marc Jacobs doesn’t make cashmere thermals anymore, because they were useful, and nice, and flattering.

On the Internet I found a Marc for Marc Jacobs thermal shirt, but it’s not cashmere, it’s not a T-shirt, and it has a stupid ass bow on it. (Curse you, Carrie Bradshaw!) If Jessica Simpson’s first event after giving birth happens to be a bar mitzvah it’s what she’ll wear.

Winona Ryder wore a Marc Jacobs dress to her trial, and she looked so good in it that he subsequently asked her to model for him. (She wrote him a note saying she was “honored.”) In 2006 she appeared “nude” in some public service ads Jacobs did around skin cancer awareness. She went from criminal to muse, but the damage had been done. Within a few seconds of seeing her, everyone still thinks “shoplifter,” and the slightly unhinged look in her dark eyes is her signature not just as an actress, but as a defendant. What she did is mystifying and particularly so considering that it was that dark holiday season following September 11. No one really knows why someone who can buy a hundred Marc Jacobs cashmere thermals will risk everything to steal one. I guess it’s not that much crazier than risking everything to try and buy one. At least Winona had hers for a few minutes.

Sarah Miller is the author of Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl, which are for teens but adults can read on the beach. She lives in Nevada City, CA.

by Awl Sponsors

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first film in Columbia Pictures’ three-picture adaptation of Steig Larsson’s literary blockbluster, The Millenium Trilogy. Directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, the film is based on the first novel in the trilogy, which altogether has sold 50 million copies in 46 countries and become a worldwide phenomenon.

In Theatres: Dec 21, 2011

There were two very nice reviews over the weekend for Percival Everett’s Assumption. Here is what I would suggest that you do: not read these reviews (yet) and just get the book. Once you’ve finished it you’ll want to read a bunch more about it to help yourself figure it out. My only caveat is that if you are the kind of person who needs neatly-tied bows at the end of your fictions, you will find yourself displeased with this one. I, not being that kind of person, thought it was terrific. I read it a couple of months ago and it still sticks with me. Anyway, it is definitely what you want to take with you over the holidays; it’s engrossing enough that it will provide good defensive cover to keep you from whatever terminally boring conversation you might otherwise be forced to suffer through with your family.

Swedish pop star Robyn appeared on Saturday Night Live on Saturday, to remind us that we should not forget that her “Dancing On My Own” is one of the, say, five best songs made by anyone in the past five years. She wore some crazy gear, sort of like that S&M-looking; harness thing Tupac rocked in the New York Times Magazine in 1996, and danced just as well as you ever have alone in front of your bedroom mirror, and helpfully put the Twitter icon on her twin drum kits, as an extra little hint to spread the word about how awesome she remains. She also played “Call Your Girlfriend,” which, yes, remember to do that, too.

Here is a delightful piece about the man who chose Buddy Holly’s glasses.