I had the great pleasure of watching UM Women's Basketball team compete in the final game of the…read more'25-'26 academic year in the second round of the NCAA tournament against NC State yesterday. The squad played exceptionally hard and pulled away for an impressive victory. The arena was clean, easy to get to, and we were welcomed by friendly elderly security screeners. The fans were engaged and polite. Several times our seat neighbors helpfully explained a rule for me after I had to be told to sit down & be quiet by my girlfriend.
"Why one star?" you ask.
I answer your question with a question: how can an institution whose athletic tradition is bested only by its academic prestige, a school full of valiant victors and heroes conq'ring, a university Darth Vader himself called the Best In The World, how can this venerated landmark serve its paying guests food not fit for the livestock on faculty in East Lansing?
At halftime our beloved Wolverines were clinging to a 3 point lead after star guard Olivia Olson sat much of the first half in foul trouble (she finished with 27 points, all after the break). We had arrived within time's bending sickle's compass, though I didn't know it yet. We ventured into the concourse and chose a lunch line without much thought. This carelessness has altered the trajectory of my otherwise unremarkable life.
Nothing looked particularly appetizing, least of all the prices. The prices! Friends, Romans, countrymen, I could have finished my abandoned undergrad degree (not from UofM, didn't even get waitlisted) for less than the cost of these heat-lamp Hindenburgs . But a hungry man with a hangry lover is wont to make hasty decisions: a small pepperoni Buddy's pizza; a small cardboard boat of fries badly in need of sildenafil; a small lukewarm water set on the counter by an aggressively indifferent sandwich artist sometime during the regular season; a box of popcorn whose visage, to a lifelong resident of B1G corn country, inspires rage and sorrow at the lost joy of freshly popped 'n buttered maize from states that begin with I; this pathetic bounty, $36.
No. $43.
Wait, no, $28.
The concession areas in Crisler clearly list prices, but no person from the battalion of service workers there employed will exchange money for food. The world-renowned Behavior and Cognitive Sciences Department at the University of Michigan has installed tray-sized platforms under mounted fisheye lenses that, in partnership with Jian Yang's Seefood®, will discern what items you have set upon it and select at random two consecutive digits of Pi and display a dollar sign preceding those two digits and demand you pay that sum to be permitted to eat. Pending peer review they anticipate their findings will be published in JABS sometime next year.
Based on the speed at which the queues move, our fellow-travelers, otherwise thinking people, tap their cards and exit. Love's not time's fool and neither am I--before I hand over my hard-earned SNAP credits, I want to be sure we are being charged the correct sum. I hesitate. My Opehlia, smarter than me in every way, arrives at the correct total for our selections long before I do. The Pi digits generated by the UoMBCSD machine do not match hers. Surely the difference is easily fixed?
Here enters a sturdy woman, bearing a nametag inscrutable, sharply uniformed as assurance of comprehensive training, to assist. Harass? Assist. "Ok den, what y'all got?" I gesture at the clearly visible food sat upon the Seefood® tray. "Uh huh," she grunts, ostensibly by way of reassurance, though a glance at my beloved confirms that neither of us are reassured. Ophelia, smarter and gentler than me, proposes a summary as seconds of unrecognition creep in this petty pace.
"I think it's charging us for a chicken and fries combo, but I just wanted the fries."
Comprehension lights upon Sturdy's countenance. "Aay! Ay, ay, gimme one'dem empy whites!" She calls back to her antecounter coworkers. For a brief moment I fear she's referring to me: there are less-accurate descriptions of your humble reviewer than an Empty White. Mercifully, a barren rectangular styrofoam container emerges and Sturdy takes it in one hand, grabs our fries uncovered-thumb-first with her other hand, and replaces the empty space with the empty white.
Seefood® thinks for a moment, then regurgitates a total that Ophelia and I both recognize is lower than correct. I move to pay but Sturdy stops me as the numbers crawl through her mind like allied troops on Omaha Beach: slowly, with violent intent. "Naw dat ain' righ'." Our fries are still marinating in her thumbsweat as she uses her other hand to scroll the touch-screen menu UoMBCSD helpfully installed as part of their two-tailed experiment on the hungry unsuspecting masses of Crisler. She arrives at FRIES as an option and presses the screen.
INVALID ENTRY
Hôtel des Invalides took less time to finish than checkout at a Crisler Seefood® public psychosocial experime