rhode island

This sounds like a good time to talk about Rhode Island.

Everyone who is from there loves it. Some, like me, need to get away, but there is truly nowhere like it. It brings about a sense of pride that, in my opinion, is unmatched. I meet people from all over the place while living in the middle of nowhere, and nobody is ever like "WOO YEAHH MICHIGAN!!" and "god I can't WAIT to get back to Idaho!!" You might hear that about cities but even that is BS. Anyway, Rhode Islanders are very proud and, yep, most have a massive inferiority complex.

Because we are never ever mentioned anywhere, except for Family Guy, it doesn't take much to get us riled up. Any mention of the Ocean State on the news or anywhere else is enough to make everyone talk about that someone that mentioned us, and this becomes even more apparent the further away from RI you are. It doesn't even matter why RI was mentioned, but you can always count on everyone with RI roots yelling "hey Rhode Island!! I'm from there!"

In fact, it doesn't have to be a good reason. CNN can report something such as "last night a gang of rogue Nazis crashed a Jewish convention in East Greenwich, Rhode Island and opened fire, killing 5 and injuring 8 in the most horrific crime the world has ever seen." But instead of saying "OMG that's terrible!", everyone who grew up there will pipe up "OMG I'm from Rhode Island! I know East Greenwich - my cousin is from there! That's terrible!"

And God help us if they actually mention the name of the Rhode Island native who committed the dastardly act. "Holy shit you mean little Frankie Esposito raped and dismembered 9 girl scouts?!? I know that guy! My father's brother's neighbor grew up with his sister!! I can't believe he would do something like that!"

So anyway, these last few days we were able to bask in TV glory without the slaughter of the Jewish or dismemberment of children.

Instead, our college basketball teams won.
The Friars somehow beat the number one ranked team in the country, thus insuring my good mood for the rest of the night whenever I looked up at ESPN while at the bar and read "Providence upsets #1 Pitt". I was just as excited to see my favorite college team win a game like that as I was just seeing the word "Providence" on TV.

And I got a second helping tonight....even though I don't have a helpful pic like above. I was surprised to see the number one play on SportsCenter being a game winning layup for URI. The rest of the country is too busy wondering where on the planet this URI place is, but those of us with ties to there are smiling.

So that is 2 days in a row of Rhode Island on the national stage. See you for the next time I can talk about Rhode Island being on the news this much.....which will be in, oh, 28 years!