Yesterday Diamond Leung of ESPN.com published an article featuring former Creighton men’s basketball coach and new Oregon coach Dana Altman. Among many interesting facts and stories, it was mentioned that Altman is living with assistant coach Brian Fish and his family. This is a completely fake, totally satirical tale of a morning in the Fish household meant only for humor. It is (probably) not based on any actual information of what bunking up with Fish is actually like.
It’s still pitch black outside as Dana Altman lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling. His bedside clock reads 4:55 a.m. and his alarm isn’t scheduled to go off for another five minutes, but he hasn’t slept well since his move to Oregon.
It’s not the new surroundings or the ever-growing challenge of rebuilding the Oregon basketball team that’s keeping him up. It’s not even that his family hasn’t yet moved out to the West Coast – though he misses them, he knows they’re in good hands back in Omaha and he’s been able to adjust to life without them over the past three months.
No, Dana Altman can’t sleep because every time he closes his eyes, his roommate pulls a frat-boy-like prank on him. Two days ago, Dana woke up to a face full of shaving cream. Last week, he woke up on his mattress, but the mattress had been moved all the way out into the backyard tree house. Two weeks ago he had to deal with only having left shoes in his closet and the rear end cut out of most of his slacks.
But tonight was one of the nights he had been able to stay awake, staving off any attempts at shenanigans, and he was ready for his iPod to start playing the sounds of the ocean, the track that he woke up to every morning because studies have shown that when one starts his day with the soothing sounds of nature…
“WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, HOO HOO HOO HOO. WHO LET THE DOGS OUT…”
The clock had just switched to 5:00, but that wasn’t the relaxing sound he’d been anticipating.
“DADGUMMIT, FISH!”
Brian Fish came barreling through Dana’s door.
“Now THIS is some getting-ready-for-the-day music, Coach. None of that nansy pansy crap you usually listen to. I mean, just listen to these words: ‘When the party was nice, the party was jumpin.’ Yeah. LET’S GET THIS PARTY JUMPIN’, DANA.
“Who’s driving today? Because I know you drove yesterday, but I was hoping to get in some Game Boy on the way to the office.”
Dana stared at Fish, clearly perplexed.
“What’s Game Boy?” he asked. “Is that one of those fancy new technological things? Like DVD players and e-mails? I don’t like the sound of it. Get rid of it.
“I’ll drive, but we’re stopping at Goodwill on the way. I need some new shirt/tie combos.”
Dana looked in the mirror. There was the faded outline of the word “dork” written across his forehead. He tried to rub it off, but didn’t have much success.
“Why’d you have to use that sharpie to write on my face?” he asked Fish.
“You know the rules,” Fish responded. “You pass out with your shoes on, you get drawn on.”
“I was taking a 15 minute nap,” pleaded Dana. “At one in the afternoon. In my office.”
“DO I MAKE THE RULES?” laughed Fish. “No. There’s nothing I can do about that. I just follow them.”
He was now paying little attention to Dana, devoting his gaze to his Blackberry, on which he was typing away.
“By the way, I found this new JUCO kid,” he told Dana. “Small point guard, great hops. You wait – he’ll make you forget the name Aaron Brooks.”