WSU Shut Down After Snow Buries Pullman

Nearly a foot of snow has closed down WSU today in Pullman. All classes after 10am were canceled, and campus buildings will be locked at 1 pm. In addition, the SRC closed at 10, State Route 195 was closed this morning, and even Pullman Transit stopped service at 10:30 this morning. An interesting note is the basketball game against Cal tonight is still on as of 11 am. It is almost unheard of for WSU to cancel classes due to weather. In fact, the last time it happened was when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. Enjoy your snow day.

Your Mom Goes to Elton John. Oh Wait, You Couldn't Buy Tickets

Want to see Elton John on Mom's Weekend? Unless you have a crap load of money, you probably are like the majority of WSU students and won't be going. It is hypocritical for this to be promoted as a Mom's Weekend event, yet there is no special preference given to WSU students or their mothers, while scalpers run rampant charging ridiculous prices on the Internet. I know their were of people who were online at exactly 10 am, calling continuously for 3 hours, and waited in line at Beasley but were still unable to get tickets. Ticketswest claims their server only went out for 6 minutes during that time period. In reality, the online ticketing system was down for much longer than this. Any time there is large demand for a concert or event this is likely to happen, but it doesn't help that WSU recommended to students that "going online at www.ticketswest.com will give you the best opportunity to purchase tickets..".

It also says on the Beasley website and releases from Ticketswest that "TicketsWest is pleased to have assisted the Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum in selling out the Elton John performance scheduled for April 12, 2008." Hey, at least you don't have to rub it in that you screwed thousands of students and their Moms over. Interestingly enough, when I sent an email Friday to Ticketswest, I received this message:

"We're sorry but this onsale generated a tremendous amount of interest, with demand far outweighing availability. Throughout most of the onsale, our web servers experienced over 6,000 concurrent connections. Qwest reported that at one point we had over 5,000 calls per minute running through their circuits to our call center. The TicketsWest ticketing system was fully functional and transacted orders from all sales channels throughout the onsale period. Due to the heavy traffic to the website, on two separate occasions, at 10:21 AM and 11:12 AM respectively, TicketsWest engineers displayed the TicketsWest maintenance page for a period of approximately 6 minutes in order to allow existing traffic already on the TicketsWest.com site to complete pending transactions.

Funny, that's exactly what it says on the Beasley website with "I'm sorry" added to the beginning. Thanks for the shit customer service Ticketswest. There are rumors of a possible second Elton John concert in Pullman, but I think that has the same chances of Oregon State winning the Pac-10 in basketball.

So what can you do about this? First of all, give all the asshole scalpers on Ebay and craigslist a piece of your mind. Second, complain to the people responsible or with power in this situation:

• Michelle Poesy, Mom's Weekend Event Coordinator, michellep@wsu.edu, 509-335-4809
• TicketsWest Corporate Office, info@ticketswest.com, 509-459-6100
• Jack Lucas, President of TicketsWest, jack.lucas@ticketswest.com, 509-459-6100
• Leo Udy, Director of Beasley PAC, udy@wsu.edu, 509-335-3748
• Fran Curtis, Elton John contact at Rogers and Cowan, fcurtis@rogersandcowan.com, 212- 455-8418
• Elson Floyd, WSU President, floyde@wsu.edu, 509-335-6666

***Please be courteous when contacting these people. Do not threaten of harass any of them, as they are trying to do their jobs.***

Finally join the Facebook group, write a letter to the Evergreen, and stay tuned to The Crimson Life for the latest information. Let's show them WSU students, in the words of the great Elton John:

Don't give us none of your aggravation
We had it with your discipline
Saturday night's alright for fighting
Get a little action in

UPDATE:
Here is contact information for the local Spokane news stations (not KAYU)

• KREM 2 - newsdesk@krem.com
  
• KXLY 4 - News4@kxly.com
• KHQ 6 - q6news@khq.com

There is also an event on Facebook, "Going To Elton John Without A Ticket". Take a look!

(Image Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum Website)

Cougs top ASU 56-55

#6 Washington State was able to squeak by #24 Arizona State 56-55. It was the second time in 2 years the Cougars have escaped Tempe with a 1 point win. Derek Low led WSU with 18 points, but the real man today for the Cougs was Kyle Weaver, with 8 rebounds, 8 assists, and some stingy defense to block James Harden's last second shot. The Cougars will return home next week to face Cal and Stanford.

Stat of the Game: Derek Low was 6-11 on 3 pointers, scoring all 18 of his points from beyond the arc

More game coverage:
Game Recap [ESPN]
No. 6 Cougs Survive No. 24 Sun Devils [WSU Athletics]
Photo Desert Finish: Cougs Win [Cougfan.com]

[Photo Paul Connors, AP]

'Cats Clobber Cougs 76-64

Washington State lost for just the second time this season as Arizona laid some treys to win 76-64 in Tucson. Jerryd Bayless led the Wildcats with 23 points, while Chase Buddinger added another 22 as Arizona pummeled a normally stringent Wazzu defense. Kyle Weaver was the leading scorer for the Cougars with 15 points, but couldn't do anything against the hot hands of Arizona.

Stat of the Game:
Arizona was 55% from the floor and 57% from 3 point land. Hard to stop that.

More Game Recaps:
Sometimes in the Pac-10, This Just Happens [WSU Hoops]
Game Recap [ESPN]
Around the Rim - Andy Katz [ESPN]
Cougars' Defense: Lost in the Desert [Daily Evergreen]

Ducks at the Bookie?

No, not the hated Oregon kind. This is a picture of some Ducks I took in front of the Bookie about 15 minutes ago. They must have thought the icy parking lot was a frozen lake.

The Wazzu Underground

Here's a website of a group of subterranean explorers from the 1990's at Washington State. They have several videos of the underground steam tunnels at WSU, and some pretty cool stories. Probably a lot nicer than walking in there than out in the snow we are supposed to get for the next two weeks...

Hoops Preview: at Arizona

#6 WSU (16-1, 4-1) heads to the McKale Center in Tucson tonight to face the Wildcats of Arizona (12-6, 2-3). The Wildcats leads the all-time series, 48-13 and 23-7 at Tucson. The Cougars swept the series last season with a 77-73 victory in overtime at Friel Court Jan. 6 and a 72-66 win at Tucson Feb. 1. Arizona presents a three-pronged attack, led by freshman guard Jerryd Bayless (19.2 points a game), complemented by forward Chase Budinger and center Jordan Hill. The Wildcats come off of a 4 point loss at Stanford and a 4 point win at Cal last week, while the Cougars swept the Oregon schools at home.

Tip: 5:30 pm
TV: FSN NW

More game previews:
Seattle Times
WSU Athletics
Daily Evergreen

Former WSU DE Rien Long in Critical Condition

"Former Washington State and Tennessee Titans football player Rien Long is in critical condition after his car crashed into a rock wall on an interstate in Nashville."

Let's hope the Outland Trophy winner will have a full recovery. Rien, you are in our thoughts and prayers.

Former WSU, Titans football player Rien Long injured in crash [Seattle P-I]

UPDATE: Long has been upgraded to stable condition [AP]

(Photo CNN/SI)

WSU Theme for Facebook

For those of you using Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension (which everyone should be doing), I have a script here that will give Facebook an awesome Crimson and Gray WSU Theme. Pretty sweet! Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Brr It's Cold!

It is a balmy 2° right now in Pullman, and it should stay pretty cold through the night. The high is supposed to be in the low 20's tomorrow and it doesn't look like we'll get above freezing until next week. Now I'm glad I got those long underwear for Christmas.

Cougs down Ducks 69-60

A packed house at Beasley Coliseum and a strong second half helped propel WSU over the Oregon Ducks 69-60. It was the first win in 7 years over the Ducks for the Cougs. The Cougs improve to 16-1 on the season and 4-1 in Pac 10 play, good for a tie with UCLA for 1st place with their loss to USC. For additional coverage, check out:

ESPN Game Recap Summary and Stats from ESPN.com

Feels Good to Have That Monkey Gone Ananlysis from WSU Hoops blog

The Cougars jumped in both polls to the number 6 position and remain a 2 seed in ESPN's bracketology

(Photo Dean Hare, AP)

The Crimson Life

Welcome to The Crimson Life! This blog is dedicated to everything WSU. There are a few WSU blogs out there, but this one will get everything you need to know about the Cougs. Thanks for visiting and GO COUGS!