Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Noah!!

So when I picked Florida to win the NCAA tournament in my bracket, I didn't know anything about them, and had actually forgotten that they had won the championship the year before. I only saw an entire Florida game for the first time on Saturday when I watched them beat UCLA. And I found myself totally unimpressed with them, not as basketball players but generally with their attitudes. They seemed sort of cocky and their fouls were sometimes cheap and obnoxious. I almost regretted picking them. They have this whole long story about how they won last year and three of them considered going pro and they all decided independently of one another that they would stay for another year but only if the others also stayed, and they had the same starting five this year that they did last year. I made my peace with most of the team, but I really had some trouble with Joakim Noah, who really very badly needs a haircut. See below:


This image doesn't perfectly capture the horror that is his hair, but it's decent enough to convey the main idea. I can't imagine what his hair must look like when it's loose, but I picture it in a giant, poofy triangle. I think my brother-in-law put it best when he said that every time he sees Joakim Noah, he just wants to grab a razor and forcibly shave his head.

Plus, the guy is super emotional and screams and pounds his chest a lot. See below:

But then I was reading this article about the Florida team's conversation on Sunday about who each player thought was the greatest men's college basketball team of all time, and Joakim Noah said that he didn't think he was qualified to answer because he spent most of his childhood in France and didn't follow college basketball.

Having lived in France myself, I was intrigued by this statement, and even more so when Torsten (a big tennis fan) excitedly asked me if I knew who Joakim Noah's father was. So I looked it up, and it is nobody other than Yannick Noah! Now, I realize that most of you won't even know who Yannick Noah is, but he was a big tennis star in the '80s and '90s, and he's currently a very popular French musician (although he is actually half Cameroonian). I even have one of his songs, Métisse, on my iPod. And I used to really like that song a lot, until I got sick of it. Yannick Noah is an amazing person, and really into charity work, and I am mad at myself for not recognizing him when the camera kept zooming in on him during the game last night. Although I did notice that he looked familiar, and that he was dressed awfully stylishly for someone's middle-aged dad.

And I also noticed that Joakim Noah's mom and Yannick Noah's ex-wife, who was also shown on camera a lot last night, was quite attractive as well. It turns out that this is not a coincidence; she was Miss Sweden in 1978.

So my (somewhat rude) question is, as the son of a very attractive tennis and pop star and a very attractive former model, why is Joakim Noah so ugly?

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