Item #38 - Go to the Roller Derby

"And so we're running just as fast as we can
Holding on to one another's hand.
Trying to get away into the night
And then you put your arms around me
and we stumbled to the ground"
-Tiffany

Is there a better anthem for the days of the 80's school-sponsored skating party night? No. No, there is not. Every single time I hear it I think of the ole-timey skating parties, and it's still one of my favorite guilty pleasure songs (and yes, I know it's actually a cover song).

And do yourself a favor right now and go watch the video. It's mall-tastic.

Even the lyrics are a near-perfect anthem.

Running as fast as we can (or skating. use you imagination people).
Holding hands.
Getting away into the night (I think a dimly lit rink with disco ball-created stars is damn close).
Tumbling to the ground with that special girl because you have problems skating together, as you share a flirtatious laugh. Tee hee hee

Of course, the only difference for me was that I wasn't nearly the suave and witty ladies man you see before you today. I was . . . . slightly less-than-smooth, as the big-ass glasses, braces and slicked-back side part probably didn't help.

Yeah, that guy isn't asking any girls to skate with him. That guy had enough problems trying to not fall on his ass by himself, let alone while holding hands.  In fact, that guy spent most of the skating party in the arcade. You could laugh at that, though maybe you just don't understand how much cooler it was to play Paperboy in the arcade than on Nintendo. I mean, come on - it had actual handlebars for you to steer the bike! I could have talked to girls during class (theoretically . . . not that I actually did), but you only got to play Paperboy with bike handlebars once a month at the skating party. I think I made the right decision.

20 some years later, and approximately 20% cooler (I'm sure that number is up for debate), I was once again off to the skating rink. This time, it was a shriner's auditorium in Winchester, MA, with Alycia, Buddy, Megan and Daniel, a native German who was in town for a few weeks for work, and what better way to showcase Americana than drinking piss beer in a dimly lit hall while girls in short shorts body check each other? Actually, you can make that scenario better - have that same German catch a T-shirt from the T-shirt cannon.

The T-shirt was a Small. No offense to Daniel, but he's no Small

We showed up for 2 matches, 1 between a couple Boston teams and 1 between a Boston All-Stars team and a Chicago team, and we went into knowing, well, almost nothing besides the fact that we'd see skating chicks beating the crap out of each other. So after some pre-gaming Wikipedia lessons, and 3+ hours of live lessons, here's the gyst:

• There's 2 30-minute running halves. Each half is broken into a bunch of small periods, or jams. 
• Each team has 5 girls on the rink at once. 4 girls are blockers, with the 5th girl being the jammer. 
• The 8 blockers on the rink form a pack that has to stay together. When a jam begins, the jammers start behind the pack and try and break through it. The first jammer through the pack is the lead jammer.
• After that first pass of the pack, the jammers try and catch the pack again, and for each person they now pass, they get a point.
• The jam ends either after 2 minutes, or when the lead jammer decides to end it by putting their hands on their hips. So being the lead jammer is a damn good thing, because they can strategically stop the jam. Simple example - the Team A jammer gets through the pack first, becoming the lead jammer. Team A's jammer stays ahead of Team B's jammer as they re-catch-up to the pack, and gets through the 4 Team B blockers, scoring 4 points. Team B's jammer is just 15 feet behind, at the back of the pack about to score points, so Team A's jammer, the lead jammer, ends the jams. Make sense? (just nod your head).
• Most of the scoring ended up being 4 point per jam, as 1 jammer would get through the pack of 4 blockers before the other jammer got through any blockers, and then they'd call off the jam. But, you can continue to score as many points as possible in 2 minutes if you'd like. This usually happened when there were penalties, in which skaters would basically get sent to a penalty box, leaving their team short-handed

Once you got the lingo, it's really pretty simple. Enough so, that I think I can actually explain the video I took below.

The red team earned lead jammer status, and their jammer has just caught the back of the pack in the video. Meanwhile, the blue team's jammer is lagging behind, a half-lap behind the pack. The red jammer is able to fight her way through the pack, passing the 4 blue blockers and earning her team 4 points in the process. At this point, she sees the blue jammer is a half lap ahead, so she can either

• Bust her ass, hope the blue jammer slows down enough for her to pass her, and then get through the pack again before the blue jammer does.
• or realize that the more likely scenario is that the blue jammer will catch the pack and start scoring before she can re-catch the pack and start scoring again, and just call-off the jam . . . and she does by putting her hands on her hips at the end of the video.

See. You got it now.  And we really got it after 3+ hours of it too, as we picked up on not just the rules, but the strategy, figuring out when lead jammers would call off the jams, and when the packs would strategically try and pick up or slow down the pace, in order to put more or less distance between them and the chasing-jammers.

The inter-Boston was a nice way to pop our derby-cherry, but the Boston-Chicago match kicked it up a notch, as the Chicago ladies were . . . slightly more aggressive. Elbows were thrown. Bodies were checked. Winds were knocked out (as 2 Boston gals had to limp back to the bench after jams). It was an old-school 70's style derby smackdown, and sadly they put the hurtin' on the hometown Boston gals (the Windy City Rollers ARE the #1 ranked team in their division. Yes, there are rankings. Yes, you Detroiters have a team. And yes, you should go check them out).

But despite being 147-44 losers, unlike skating party Alan, the Boston Derby Dames still managed to be pretty damn cool.

Item #37 - Go to Second City in Chicago

"polish sausage . . . Ditka . . . Ditka . . . . sausage . . . . bears . . . . " -Todd O'Conner
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I love Chicago. It's been my 3rd home for the last 10 years. After graduating from Michigan in 2001, I'd say a good 1/4 of the people I knew ended up moving there. And why the hell not? If you're from the Midwest and wanted to stay close enough to your family that they were just a half day drive away, and wanted to be in a city that wasn't 10 years behind the trends of the coasts, it was the place to be (oooooh! burn! that's right. I'm an East Coast Elitist now. Just like the Michigan Fight Song instills a sense of intellectual arrogance with the "leaders and best" lines, living on a coast makes you feel a decade of trends ahead of you flyover folks. I think yesterday's Detroit News had a story about a new fad called "Zubaz" . . . I kid because I love).

Estimated Date of Photo? . . . 2009

So with so many friends living there, I've consequently made many many trips there. And Chicago, you've supplied me with some damn good times.  All-you-can-drink happy hours, deep dish delisciousness, two great weddings, redheads, trough peeing in Wrigley, roofdeck parties, Old Style bars, and Chicago even let me date my biggest crush ever (spoiler alert - it didn't work out). Granted, I've also spent one night puking in a cab, and another getting kicked out of a cab because I had no money and then ended up on a corner in the middle of northern Chicago without a fucking clue where to go (kudos to Hillary and Regan for making sure I woke up in a bed as opposed to a puddle of some homeless dude's urine), but the good has far outweighed the bad. Chicago, you're my kind of town.

But having been to Chicago so many times, I've already exhausted a shit ton of the possible new things to do, or at least all the things the average tourist would do.  Sears Tower. Shedd Aquarium. Millenium Park. Navy Pier (its like Fanieul Hall, but with 225% more mustaches!), etc. But as I brainstormed with 52-partner-in-crime Megs, I remembered that I was a comedy elitest, and that Chicago was home to the single greatest breeding ground of comedy over the last 30 years - Second City Chicago.

I've been to improv before. Hell, I've been to Second City in Detroit before. But this is different. This is a comedy landmark.

 

I don't even need to give the detailed history of the place to justify it having that status. All I need to do is list their famous alumni, and holy shit, there's quite a few - Fred Willard, Harold Ramis, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey. And that's just the start. Check out the rest of the list, and you'll find a bunch of other second tier names (Dan Castellaneta, AKA, Homer Simpson) and "that guy"s (Jack McBrayer, AKA, Kenneth from 30 Rock). That's comedy gold, Jerry . . . GOLD!

Since I count an even 20 people on the Chicago alumni list that have connections to Saturday Night Live (mostly as stars), let's have a little SNL diversion, shall we? It's a nice coincidence that SNL has a musical act every week, because just like with music, older people will always tell younger people that SNL was better back in their day, with "in their day" typically occurring around ages 11-16. Darrell Hammond was basically filling the role Phil Hartman left, but I'm always going to prefer Hartman because I was raised on a Hartman-backed SNL. So now at the age of 31, I of course think SNL . . . well, blows (save for the occasional Digital Short or Timberlake-hosted episode), even though its basically the same formula of 1-note jokes being retold 6 times in a 5 minute span. Landshark = Hans & Franz = Gap Girls = Spartan Cheerleaders. It is what it is, it's just that most of our comedy tastes have evolved. I mean, I consider myself a comedy elitist, but even I once thought . . . . Dane Cook was funny (forgive me Mitch Hedberg, for I have sinned). So even though it appears to suck, maybe it only mildly sucks these days. I don't know. Or maybe I just need to drink more during it.  But one thing I do know? Norm MacDonald was the greatest host of Weekend Update in SNL's history, regardless of your generation. If you disagree, your opinion is wrong.

 

So Megs and I had a nice little pseudo-date by attending the 8:00 show on a Tuesday, which was surprisingly, a packed house, despite Second City actually having 2 different theaters there. And maybe we saw the next Bill Murray up there . . . or maybe we saw the next Horatio Sanz (star of Boat Trip!). Either way, it was funny as expected. Though what I didn't expect was the mass exodus after the second act and just before the final half hour of 100% improv (the first 2 acts were probably 70% sketches, 30% improv). What gives? You could have set your Tivo to make sure you don't miss your Jay Leno, dammit. And you ditch early and miss the best part of the night? To quote another great comic: "Whooooooooo . . . . are these people?"

Item #36 - No TV or Video Games for a Week

"What's he's typed will be a window into his madness"

"No TV and no beer make Homer something something"
"Go crazy?"
"Don't mind if I do!"
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Saturday, 07-09-11,  11:11am

I have been up for just over an hour.  I plan to go the next 7 days without TV and without video games, and so by Friday night, I assume I'll have unleashed my inner Homer. Perhaps some giant murals of my favorite television characters on my living room walls. Maybe life-sized homemade cut-outs of my team that I've been playing FIFA 2010 with. I'm not sure. But it could be ugly, as I'm definitely one of those people that likes the comforting white noise of TV - even when I'm sitting down and writing one of these oh-so-hilarious posts, the TV's on in the background. Doesn't have to be anything good. Just has to be on.

From here on out, we'll be shortening No TV and No Video Games to just NTVNVG, because that's what the cool young kids with their hippety hop music and Snoopy Doopy Dogs would do.

Of course, in today's wacky technological world, "no TV and no video games" needs to be a little more defined. If I wanted to, I could just leave me TV off all week and stream Slingbox from my parents house direct to my smartphone . . . but that's cheating, and cheating is for pansies, communists and Jesse Ventura ("Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat!"). So we'll try and live within the spirit of the list item, and outline some particulars.

• Hulu episodes. . . illegal. That's pretty obvious. It's TV, but just on my laptop
• TV DVD's . . . illegal. I could easily kill my spare time this week by going through all 53 of the Bluth family's issues, or by following Bret and Jemaine's wacky New York misadventures (see what I did there? "mis"adventures? get it?), but that definitely goes against the spirit of the law.
• Youtube/Hulu clips . . . allowed. I'm talking about the short stuff that will keep me up to date in the world of internet memes, because a world without Keyboard Cat is a world I don't want to live in.
• Netflix Streaming . . . illegal. There's like 70 movies on just my instant streaming queue. Too easy of a time killer. 
• Netflix 2-at-a-time physical DVD's . . . allowed. The point of NTVNVG is to not get sucked into doing nothing. It's the anti-Seinfeld I suppose. Sitting down to watch a DVD is more like an actual event. There's purpose. And since I only have 2 at a time, and it's the weekend, and I've already watched 1 of my 2, and it takes 2 days to send one in and get it back, the most I could possibly watch this week is 3.
•  Live Sports at home. . . illegal. This one pains me. Copa America is going on (the South American soccer championship). The women's World Cup is going on. And yes, I'm soccer-geeky enough to care about watching both. 
• Sport Highlights Online . . . legal. No different than reading the news in the year 2011. 
• XBox games . . . illegal. Obviously
• Games on my phone . . . legal. So long as it doesn't mean me losing 30 minutes out of the day because I got too involved in a game. But most of the time its just Sudoku anyway.

So thems the rules. Now for the full disclosure -  there's a few reasons I waited awhile to do this list item:

• Its a shitty TV week. No new episodes for any of my favorite weekly shows (though I will miss my man crushes Stewart and Colbert).  
• Its a shitty sports week on the whole. No NFL. No college football. No English Premier League. No NHL playoffs. Just the aforementioned soccer competitions and meaningless midseason baseball. 
• I've actually got some stuff going on this week. 3 soccer games. Golf with work folk. Maybe a softball game. Oh, and an oil change scheduled for Wednesday! How exciting!

So I may be exploiting some loopholes here,  but consider this attempt to decrease my TV and video games addiction like a smoker using the patch instead of quitting cold turkey.

Sunday, 07-10-11, 12:18pm

One day down, though it was a fairly easy one. A soccer game, followed by the roller derby, followed by the bar. Fin. Today will be tougher. I may have to actually get outside and do stuff on my own, as crazy as a thought as that might be. Soccer in 8 hours. Lots of time to do . . . stuff. And as I type, the US women's soccer team is leading Brazil 1-0. Yes, I want to watch. No, I won't watch. Sigh.

Sunday, 07-10-11, 2:48pm

I haven't really done anything positive yet today. But, apparently I did end up missing A RIDICULOUSLY GREAT WORLD CUP GAME. Strike 1, NTVNVG. I had the game cast going (just stats, no video). But according to the Facebook universe, I really missed out. Non-soccer folk commenting on how awesome it was.
"Dude... that game is easily in the top 5 greatest sports moments ever"
"One of the best sporting events I've watched in a while. Wow. " 
The US ties Brazil in overtime with basically no time left, and then they win on penalty kicks. For the second time today . . . sigh. Even when I try and pick a week when I have little chance of missing anything important, I miss something important (and yes, I DO consider the women's World Cup important). They play the semi-final Wednesday, and since I'm pot-committed now, I'll miss that one too. Hopefully they make it through and I can watch the final Sunday.

Sunday, 07-10-11, 6:33pm

I certainly haven't done much today. A soccer game yesterday combined with one tonight and tomorrow have prevented my old man knees from wanting to do anything active. But, I did do one thing I probably wouldn't have done if I had been watching TV instead - for the first time in the 2 years and 8 months I've had it, I actually vacuumed my car. I guess that's something. Oh, I went to Target, which in itself is a vacuum for money. According to the Spicer Theory, it's virtually impossible to spend less than $50 in a trip to Target. Today's trip hit $90. Damn you Target and your reasonably priced plain T-shirts and picture frames!

Monday, 07-11-11, 9:48pm

Back in college, I used to play on a Sunday men's club team over the summer. Games were at 10am, 12pm or 2pm. And after awhile, I figured out 2 different correlations to how well I played in game. First, if the previous night was . . . . fruitful? . . . .I ended up playing worse. However, the drunker I got the night before, the better I played, which held true even if I was out until 3am and then played in the early 10am game.

After 3 days of going cold turkey, I now think that either video games, TV or both, also have an effect. Saturday, early into the experiment, I had a 1:00pm game. I played pretty damn well. I had a goal. We won 3-1. Hooray. Then yesterday, Day 2, I had another game. I had 2 goals, we won 4-1, and overall I played pretty decently. Today? 72 hours without TV or video games? We lost 4-1 and I played like garbage. Easily my worst outdoor game of the 15 or so I've played this season so far. It even warranted the classic Alan slink-away-silently-afterwards-as-I-mentally-yell-at-myself move.  Thankfully my next game isn't until Saturday, for which I'll apparently have to wake up at 6am to rejuvenate myself by playing FIFA Soccer on XBox, with a TV in the corner showing whatever the hell is on at 6am on a Saturday.

Today's missed viewing includes the WWE (which is the quintessential have-it-on-in-the-background-as-I-play-on-my-laptop viewing. I grew up with it - go watch your shitty reality TV and stop judging me jerk) and the Homerun Derby. Hmmmm, missing 3 hours of Chris Berman yelling BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK? Hooray for NTVNVG!

Wednesday, 07-13-11, 10:57pm

My scheme has worked to perfection the last 2 days, and I think I'm now well over the hump.Yesterday a group of 10 of us golfed immediately after work (while I may play better or worse under varying conditions for soccer, at least my golf game is still consistant . . . . ly shitty). I got home and made a busy man's grilled cheese sandwich, which consisted of me microwaving some cheese in between slices of bread while running out the door, as I had to hurry up and catch the bus for a friendly little social outing, aka, a date (for which you'll get no details. Maybe the dating blog comes after the 52 are knocked out).

Today was another busy day. Work, then an oil change  (which took almost an hour and a half, so they gave it to me for free. Hooray for good business practices), and then a softball game (3-5, with some stellar outfield play). And now instead sitting down with a frosty beverage watching the Daily Show, I'm content to sit with a frosty beverage and type.

So since that's all I have for the last 2 days, let's tack on a list my 5 favorite TV shows going right now:

1. Community - This season it may not have been the absolute funniest show on TV (though it was damn close), but they are doing shit no one has ever done before, or doing things people have done but in completely new and creative ways. The depth of the jokes is ridiculous, so much so that it even once took a blog to point out an entire plot/joke to me in one particular episode, because that entire joke was going on in the background of the actual story. All you people who got on the Arrested Development bandwagon well after it was canceled? Get on this show while you still can. 
2. Parks & Rec - This is the show that WAS the funniest show of the year. Amy Phoeler's character is the rock of the show, but the supporting cart nails it, even more so than the supporting cast of the American Office did early on. Tom Haverford is delightful, and Ron F-ing Swanson is the fucking man.
3. Breaking Bad - There's apparently only 2 answers to the question "what's the best drama on TV?" And since I have no interest in the love affairs of NYC advertising exec's in the 60's, Breaking Bad is the best drama for me. It may not be the fastest paced show, but it always pays off with some absolutely thrilling and jaw-dropping moments (Hank vs the Mexicans in the parking lot, or the night Walt came into Jesse' apartment and . . . and we'll stay spoiler-less). Season 4 starts Sunday people (what a nice way to come back from NTVNVG - the women's World Cup final, and then Breaking Bad). Get into it. 
4. The Daily Show - Consistently funny 4 nights a week. Man crush on Jon Stewart. Enough said.
5. Modern Family, 30 Rock, Always Sunny - I can't choose. At their peak, they're all hysterical, but, they're not always at their peak these days like Parks & Rec or Community are. But if all 3 have a new episode in a week, at least 1 is guaranteed to be incredibly funny. Tracy Morgan can read a health care bill and make me laugh. Charlie Day may be able to just play one note, but he's sooooo freaking good at it. And Modern Family can pull off the cheesy Full House-esque happy ending and not make me want to punch an Olsen twin in the face. You got that, dude?

Thursday, 07-14-11, 8:00pm

Oh man. Thursday at 8:00pm. Reruns or not, I'm about to miss my murderer's row of TV, with Community, Parks & Rec and 30 Rock on in a 2 hour span. Painful.

Also painful? Getting a cold. I only get them in the winter. 1 cold per year. Slowly fades in and then out over a 2 week span. But I got the slight tickle in my throat a few days ago and now have the tickle-cough going on. I am convinced its from me not getting my daily dose of Vitamin TV.

And the bad omens for going TV-less continued today on my way home. I got rear-ended about 2 blocks from my house. Not badly, and as of now there doesn't appear to be any damage (yes, I got his info), but annoying none-the-less. And for all my friends that work at a certain speaker company in Framingham - he was wearing a work badge from your mountain-top company, and he had a license plate holder from Georgia Tech. I will let you draw your own conclusions.

Off to fill-in for a softball team again. Under 30 hours to go. . . . 30 . . . long . . . hours . . . . 

Thursday, 07-14-11, 11:34pm

Went 3-4 in softball, in a league that uses wooden bats (old school, yo!). One positive trend for the NTVNVG week.

And since we did the 5 best yesterday, let's rattle off my 5 worst, or at least 5 random ones I want to bitch about.

1. Two and a Half Men. Hate . . . you . . . so . . . .much. I have "play a Two and a Half Men drinking game" on the list, and still haven't been able to put myself through it, despite it being relatively easy, and despite all the Charlie Sheen news 4 months ago. This show is the epitome of lazy-ass writing that appeals to boring rural housewives who think a Friday night out at Chili's is a wild weekend. Actually, that's all of CBS. And this is its flagship. Again, I hate you.
2. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Just because your shirt is made from the same material as your jeans, doesn't mean it goes together, and it definitely doesn't make you a cool middle class guy, you 2-time show-stealing son-of-a-bitch. 10 monkeys on 10 typewriters could write his monologue.
3. Fox News. All of it. Yeah, I'm liberal. Deal with it.
4. Big Bang Theory. Kind of a Two and a Half Men lite. I've seen a few episodes. Not horrible, as far as CBS sitcoms go. But it just got nominated today for Best Comedy, and it had 2 actors get nominated for Best Actor. At the same time, Community was completely shut out. No Best Comedy nod. No Joel McHale for Best Actor. No Annie, Britta, Troy or Abed for Best Supporting. So because its got the Emmy nods Community deserved, and because its actually on at the same time as Community, and could help lead to its early Arrested Development-esque downfall, it gets on the list.
5. How I Met Your Mother. Probably the best of the CBS comedies, but that's like being the skinny kid at fat camp. Actually this show has its moments and isn't half bad. NPH is funny. I've seen a fair amount of episodes. I've laughed on occasion. But I have a beef with it for 3 reasons. 1 - It gets WAY overrated. I know a lot of people that LOVE this show, when in reality, its nowhere near the comedies I've mentioned above. 2 - Just like Friends, its a rom-com movie disguised as a sitcom. Don't be fooled people. Just because NPH throws in a few man-I-love-banging-chicks jokes doesn't mean this isn't just a relationship show at its core. And 3 - Speaking of Friends, Ted is the most punchable TV character since Ross. You're not romantic. You're a whining unbearable douche. Grow a pair dammit. 
6. (bonus!) Sportscenter .The easy thing to do is rag on Sportscenter because it went from  being cool in 90's to thinking it was way cooler than it actually was in the 2000's. Or because all is does these days is kiss the superstars' asses and appeal to the big markets (Jeter hit his 3000th! Slurp slurp slurp).  But, the real reason I can't stand is much simpler. When I used to watch it before school back int he day, it was a half hour, and it was a filled with highlights. 30 minutes jam-packed with actual sports. Over the course of a bowl of cereal, I could get almost completely caught up in yesterday's games. Now? 60 minutes, and maybe 5 minutes of highlights. You'd figure that a show called Sportscenter would, at its core, show a lot of sports . . .  but no (and I realize bitching about this is probably as cliche as bitching about MTV not showing music videos, but whatever. My blog. Deal with it). 

/rant

Friday Night, 07-15-11, 1:48am

The last time I really watched TV was over a week ago, but we'll roll with the idea that a week isn't limited to exact hours, but rather 7 days and nights. So no TV until I wake up tomorrow.

Technically, I did see some TV this week. Though it was really only while I was out at bars, so that more of a coincidence than anything. And despite having Netflix movies in-house, I said "fuck it" and was able to go without movies this week too. Hooray for me.

I was able to kill off today by again going out. Went to Revere to see a sand castle competition (some cool stuff, but a little underwhelming on the whole) with a new friend of the female variety, and then we headed back downtown for dinner and drinks. A delightful little night overall.

Again, its almost 2am. I'm tired. I'm in the middle of a full-on cough-ridden bug (though I'm not so bad that I can't have a tall-boy Narragansett). Sorry for the lack of jokes at this point. It's been an exhausting immunity-lacking week. I'll try and come up with something to tie it all up tomorrow morning. Hopefully over a cup of iced coffee . . . while watching a Magic Bullet infomercial, or whatever the hell is on at 9am. TV! I'm coming back for you baby!

Saturday, 07-16-11, 10:31am

They say "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it dosent, then it was never meant to be." Well TV . . . I'm back, and I'm yours forever! (though maybe in a reduced capacity). I've been up for over an hour without you, let's see what I'm missing.
(channel surfs)
Well, that was less than exciting. But I guess I'm down to 2 choices. 3rd Round coverage of the British Open, or a movie called The Promotion on Comedy Central. Its from 2008, and it stars John C Reilly and Sean William Scott. I've never heard of it, which means its either a underground indie film, or a straight-to-DVD kind of film. And considering Wikipedia has no info on how much money it made, I'm guessing its the latter (Rottentomatoes top critics have it at 48%). So yeah, that's what I've been missing.


One week of no TV and no video games. What did we learn about myself? Well, lets do it in handy graph form. 

7 days of experimentation. Thus the above chart is 100% factual. Its science. And its science that doesn't need to be repeated.

Item #35 - Get on a Jumbotron

As previously mentioned, I've kept all my tickets stubs for the last 17 years or so. Movies, concerts and sporting events. I'm not exactly sure why I keep them all, but I'm glad I did, because then I can go back and count them all for blog posts about sporting events! And so I did.

That's almost 200 sporting events. About 11 per year, with that number skyrocketing during my college years, and fading a little recently while living in "god damn it I can't get a fucking ticket because all these teams keep winning and they keep selling out despite absurdly high ticket prices" Boston. Stupid good teams with their stupid pink hat wearing stupid fans.

When Walter and I first moved to Boston, the Sox were a better-than-average team, but not championship material. In September, my Tigers came to town. We were able to show up 3 days in a row and get tickets no problem. We sat in the outfield during a beautiful day game, shirtless, shoeless, drinking beers together, like 2 buddies perfectly secure in their sexuality. It was glorious. Not a chance in hell of that happening the last 8 years. 

 Baseball Trip 2009 in the bleachers in Denver. As the Flintstones once said - "we'll have a gay ole time!"

So while I may not get to go to as many games as I would like to (and I won't until the Boston teams start sucking again and Fairweather Nation goes back to their shanties), I've had a pretty worthy career attending games so far and can't really complain all that much. And this of course leads to the portion of the post where I brag about the cool shit I HAVE seen live.

A Title Game
This one happened to be at the Granddaddy Of ' Em All, The Rosebowl. We made it out for Michigan's 21-16 win over Ryan Leaf and Washington State in 1998. Technically not a title game like the universally-loved BCS has now, but it was the de facto title game that year, and gave Michigan a share of the national title (just a half-share, thanks largely in part to Peyton Manning shitting the bed in their bowl game against Nebraska. And a pre-Colts Manning hatred was born). We spent New Year's in the Vegas airport on a layover. We slept on the street of the parade route since our hotel room was rented out.We denied offers of $700+ for the tickets despite being poor college students . . . and it was all worth it.  

The Biggest Sporting Event in the World
World Cup 1994. USA vs Switzerland. Silverdome. After going down 1-0, the US ties it up with an Eric Wynalda free kick. I'm 14 and get upset when the guy behind me spills beer on my program while celebrating. I still have the program. It still kind of smells like Bud. 

The Greatest Team in the World
Yes, American sporting leagues. It's very cute that you call yourself "world champs" when you win. Hooray. USA is #1! But FC Barcelona? They really are the best in the world. To quote Poppy, "on this, there IS . . . NO . . . DEBATE!" 

A Buzzer Beater.
November 4, 2005. My Pistons versus the hometown Cetlics. I'm wearing a Pistons shirt, along with fellow attendees Angela and Laura. We get razzed all game in the upper deck by Celtics fans, and the Celtics end up going up by 1 with 0.8 seconds left on a Mark Blount jumper. Mark . . . friggin . . . . Blount.  The Garden erupts. We prepare to sprint out to limit the heckling after the game ends, but Rip Hamilton ends up as a savior as he curls off a screen, gets of his shot off, and it goes in. Time expires. Pistons win, and the Garden has the largest swing in decibel levels I've ever seen. It's quite fantastic.  

Overtime Greatness
July 7, 2007.  The Tigers take on the visiting Red Sox. The game goes 13 innings before the Tigers win it 3-2. We stay the whole game, the longest I've ever been to, despite having a 6am flight the next day. We are bad mamma jammas.

Orange Bowl, 2000. Michigan vs Alabama. A legend is born. Tom Brady, in his final game in a Michigan uniform (a team that he started for over 20 times! I have as big of man crush on him as anyone, but stop perpetuating the myth that he wasn't even a starter in college Bostonians. He's great enough already, what with those flowing locks and manly goat-holding abilities). Anyway, Brady leads us back from 14-0 and 28-14 deficits to send it to overtime, where he throws a TD on his first pass. Alabama then scores on their possession . . . but they miss the extra point. I almost cry, half out of joy, half out of drunkenness. We pass many a pissed off redneck in the parking lot, and Joe buys a Alabama T-Shirt for $2, just so he can burn it.


Controversy (with a side of Overtime Greatness)
Thanksgiving, 1998. I was at "The Coin Flip Game". The Lions and Steelers go to overtime. Jerome Bettis calls tails on the coinflip. It comes up tails . . . but the ref thought he heard Bettis say "heads". Lions "win" the coin toss.  Normally mild-mannered Steelers coach Bill Cower nearly has a heart attack about 30 feet from us, and Jason Hanson kicks the game winning field goal on the Lions' first possession. 

A Great Comeback
December 13, 1997. Oh-so-easily-hate-able #1 Duke comes to Ann Arbor to take on "amateur" athlete Robert Traylor and unranked Michigan. Down 17, Michigan comes storming back, and ends up winning by 8. The court is rushed . . . though we only watch it get rushed as we got to enjoy our freshmen upper deck tickets.  

Walk-Off Glory.
October 5, 2007. Game 2 of the ALDS. Bottom 9, 2 out, and Manny Ramirez hits what is probably the longest homerun I've ever seen hit in person. A bomb over Monster on Landowne. The Sox go on to win the World Series, and Manny Ramirez goes on to take a gametime piss inside thew Green Monster, high five a fan during a catch in Baltimore, and fail a steroid test.

Not a bad resume. But of course, with the highs, come the lows. 

A World Series Game
2004. The Red Sox finish off the Yankees after being down 0-3 in the series. The Steal. The "bloody" sock. You know the story. I'm in grad school at Purdue, 1000 miles away from Fenway, but I put my name in the World Series ticket lottery . . . and win. Though my Sox fandom will never surpass my Tigers fandom, I had been following them fairly hardcore for 4 years by then, and since a chance to win a World Series after 86 freakin years is kind of a big deal, and since I wanted to see Boston devour itself in riots in person, I had to buy tickets and get my ass back to Boston. And since getting back for Games 1 or 2 would have been real tough, and real expensive, and since I would rather see them win a Series clinching game, and see the celebrations to follow, I got tickets to Game 6. Row 1, centerfield, by the Sox bullpen. Close enough that I could steal a ball away from the Cardinals Jim Edmonds, helping the Sox to baseball glory. I could have been that guy! . . . had the series not ended in 4 games in St Louis. Instead, after not getting the refund on the shipping and handling charges for the tickets, I ended up with $30 souvenirs for a game that never happened.

See a Baseball Brawl
August 11, 2009. My hometown Tigers take on the Sox at Fenway. In the bottom of the 2nd, roid-raging Kevin Youkilis charges young Rick Porcello after being hit. Porcello did his wrestling scouting of Youkilis though, and executed a nice reversal for the takedown. FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Benches clear. Bullpens empty . . . and I catch the aftermath of it all on the monitors by the beer stands as I exit the bathroom. Almost 90 baseball games in the last score (yeah, I used "score" in the Abe Lincoln sense), and no brawl eye-witnessed.


Catch a Foul Ball / Homerun
April 9, 2008.  It's my and my girlfriend-at-the-time Angela's anniversary. We're both Sox fans, and coincidentally, she won the ticket lottery and scored 2 seats on top of the Green Monster at Fenway, arguably the most sought-after ticket in baseball. And again coincidentally, my Tigers are in town. She wears a Sox jersey. I weat my '84 Trammell Tigers. Yup, we're that couple. We have standing room tickets, but there's a small portion of the 3rd row of Monster seats for the handicapped, and since no handicapped folk wanted to make the 40 foot trek to the top of the wall, we snag a couple seats.

Fast forward to the 4th inning, and the Tigers' Marcus Thames hits a shot that heads right for a spot just below us (the 3 rows up there are set up like 3 rows of bars and stools, with a wall in between each row). I reach over our ledge, stretch as much as I can and . . . stretch to far. The ball ricochets off my wrist, down to some stupid kid or something. I'm too distraught to care, and spend the next 5 innings contemplating what I could have down differently, and how I would redo it all. But as the 9th rolls around, and the Tigers are rolling 6-2, and faithless Sox fans on the Monster have started to clear out . . . REDEMPTION TIME! Carlos Guillen hits a shot 15 feet to the right of us, and thanks to the beat-the-traffic Sox fans, there's empty seats and I sprint over to ready myself . . . just so I can reach over the ledge too far once again and have the ball go over my hands, hit the wall below us, and again roll to some stupid kid.  I . . . am . . . emasculated.

In my defense, the physics of the situation are not conducive to actually catching a ball. The Green Monster is the maybe the second shortest homerun in all of baseball, with the Pesky Pole in right at Fenway being 8 feet closer. So when a line drive homerun is hit, at that short of a distance, it's fucking FLYING. And being 40 feet up only adds to the difficulty level. I've played baseball back in my day, and can play a mean outfield in softball these days, but both of those balls were near impossible to catch gloveless. However, on the hand, I just suck. 

So there you go. I'm still missing some items on the typical sportsfan's checklist. But on the recent baseball trip to Minneapolis, I was able to knock out one more - after 200 sporting events, I got on the Jumbotron.

It was around the 6th inning. We had standing room tickets, but eventually found our way to centerfield and a set of open sets (baseball trip seat theory goes like this - sit as far away as possible from anyone else so you get let your inner jackass out and not worry about it). And in between innings, the Jumbrotron catches a close-up shot of Walter, McCarty and myself. Maybe they thought we were hot, or maybe they got a kick out of Walter wearing jorts and a Randy Moss Patriots jersey (remember, he used to play in Minny) while doing his classic chicken dance (sorry, baseball trip Rule #1 - incriminating/embarrassing baseball trip videos or pictures do not make it to the interwebs). I assume it was the former.

So we get on screen, and as soon as I notice, I do what any sane person would . . . I lifted up McCarty's shirt. Why? I don't know. But at least I do now know why people act like jack-asses the second they do end up on some reality show. The camera may add 40 pounds, but it also subtracts 40 IQ points.

My psychiatric take - I also used to have this weird life goal of not just getting shown during Sportscenter, but specifically getting my nipple shown. Again, I don't know why. But then I "grew up", and Sportscenter became an hour long piece of self-aggrandizing unwatchable garbage, and I lost that goal. Perhaps this was a reinvention of that goal, one in which I realized I had been drinking beer for the last 3 hours and my beer belly wasn't jumping at the chance to be on screen for 40,000 people. That, and maybe I just wanted to see McCarty partially shirtless because in the 16 or so years I've known him, after being on baseball trips that included oceans, and pools, and hot hotel rooms that aren't conducive to sleeping with your shirt on, I've NEVER seen him shirtless. If he's known for anything, it's A, being tall, and B, never being shirtless. I secretly wonder if he has an advanced form of Tobias Funke's never-nude syndrome. Anyway, the Jumbotron gave me the diversion to actually make it happen. So suck it McCarty!


After a few seconds of enjoying ourselves in all our Jumbotron glory, I was able to remember my duty as the official baseball trip phtographer, and I quickly grabbed it to take the following.

 Note Walter on the right is partially through a Ravishing Rick Rude pelvic swirl (skip to 28 seconds in). And if you zoom in, you can get a feel for what the shot initially looked like of just the 3 of us.

Water, McCarty, myself

And if you zoom out just a bit further, you can see 4 other baseball trip members 2 rows behind us, along with a guy who I now envy - a guy who actually did proudly display his nipples for all to see. Congratulations sir!

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Almost 2300 words on what was 5 seconds of glory. Not bad. Though it helps that I'm currently in the midst of a list challenge item - no TV or video games for a week. Almost 3 days down, 4 to go. Full diary to come after the week is over.

Item #34 - Run the Warrior Dash

“Warriors . . . . come out to plaaa-aaayyyy” -Luther

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Warrior Dash? More like the Warrior Crawl! I mean, am I right people?!?

No really, the Warrior Dash was a loooooong slow day. Let's go through it, shall we?

The Warrior Dash is one of the new-fangled obstacle-based races that seem to be popping up all over the place in the last year or so, like the Spartan Sprint, Ruckus, or Tough Mudder. I've been wanting to do one for awhile, and since Tough Mudder is almost 10 miles long and includes running up, down and all over Mt Snow, and since I enjoy being able to walk, my unprepped body decided to pass on that one. So it would have to be one of the shorter ones, and when Groupon had an offer for the Warrior Dash, well, my wallet made the choice for me.

12:00pm – I leave Brighton to head to Amesbury, with a short stop in Cambridge to pick up Ryan. The drive should be about an hour, and we're expected to get to the parking lot an hour before our 2:00 start time (that would be 1:00, for the timing-ly challenged).

The Warrior Dash takes place on both Saturday and Sunday. There's probably 25 or so total heats in which several hundred people head out once. Since we signed up so late, with the rest of the cheap-ass Grouponers, we got one of the last heats.

1:05 – We get off the highway 5 minutes later than we hoped, after having to take the semi-scenic route to avoid weekend construction. Plenty of time before our heat. 1.5 miles to the parking lot, where they'll have shuttle buses to the actual race.

2:05 – We park. The last 1.5 miles took and hour. Apparently, they thought it was a good idea to have just a single lane into the lot, despite the fact that upwards of 400 people are supposed to be running in the various heats that take place a mere 30 minutes apart. It was . . . not a good idea. Luckily for us, we may have caught the “good” traffic, as they at least had stopped charging $10 for parking, most likely after learning that forcing people into 1 lane into an enormous grass lot and then having to take the time to collect money and make change creates a GIANT CLUSTERFUCK OF IMPATIENT WARRIORS.

We meet up with Cindy and her boy Brian, and then mosey on over to the shuttle buses. We've already missed our scheduled heat, so why rush now?

2:45 – We finally get on a bus. For a race that should garner more testosterone-fueled energy than any other I've done, I'm already tired, beat, and am more looking forward to my soccer game later in the day than the race.

3:10 – After sitting at the pickup location for 10 minutes, driving the whole mile to the race, and then sitting just outside the parking lot for another 10, we finally get off the bus. My Hulk rage is nearly in baby-punching mode at this point.

3:30 – We get to the start of the race, about 90 minutes after we were scheduled to. Luckily, we catch the very last heat of the day. We hop to the front pre-starting-gun because I imagine that with the obstacles, the tight course, and the amount of . . . less-than-athletic people participating in this particular event, the course is going to resemble the aforementioned parking lot and be a giant clusterfuck of humanity

3:31 – After the initial obstacle, a giant hill to start the course, we hit the mud. There's a lot of it. A shit ton of it. I look forward to getting out of it and not having to worry about my footing on every single step I take.

3:45 - So much fucking mud! Thanks to the rain the day before, and the fact that we had the very last heat of a race filled weekend, the entire cross-country course is basically destroyed. I assume there was supposed to be mud involved at various points, but the 3+ mile course was literally 98% caked in mud 2”-12” deep. It's worthless to run up hills. Walking is just as fast but twice as efficient, and the inner engineer says “just take your time up these, champ.”

3:50 - At the halfway point of the race, I start to pass people from the heat 30 minutes prior to us that have decided to apply the walking-is-more-efficient theory to the entire course. At this point, both the words “warrior” and “dash” seem to have lost their meaning. 
 

4:08 – I finish in about 38 minutes, with a pace near 12:30 per mile. As someone who now (sometimes begrudingly) considers himself a runner, I would be disgusted with that in a street race (the last race I ran was a 5 miler, and my pace was 7:31 for some relativity). But even after taking into account the obstacles the conditions, you can still throw all pace logic out the window.

At that point in the weekend, even the people overlooking the obstacles were in full-on “meh” mode. “Want to skip the rope climb wall? Whatever, I'm half-drunk already anyway.” And with a lack of personel, I'm not even sure what one obstacle was even supposed to be. It was a bunch of tires hanging from ropes. Were we supposed to swing between them? Dive through them? I'm so confused! . . . So we just ran by them. I can play the “meh” game too.

The fastest time on Saturday was apparently 22 minutes, while the fastest time Sunday was 25. I can only assume that time happened in heat #1, because by the time we got the dregs of the course, even Steve Prefontaine would have been running a 28 minute race at best while merrily cussing through woods (that's called named-dropping to appeal to the hardcore running crowd). It was brutal. But my time did put me in the top 5%, so I guess I had that going for me, which was nice.

4:10 – I get my 1 free beer. Anger at the course slowly begins to subside.

4:45 – After the rest of our little crew finishes up both the course and their adult beverages, we take a pre-wash photo . . .

Not shown - the lower 1/3 of our bodies totally caked in mud

get moderately cleaned up, and head out. Of course, heading out requires more lines and shuttle buses. Argh. Seriously, keep your babies away from me. They will be punched in a fit of rage, though with my upper body, theres a good chance they will come out unscathed.

5:15 – We finally get back to the parking lot. We finish off the beers that Cindy and Brian had smartly brought, and get the hell out of there, taking our Warrior medal, shirt and helmet with us (even the "helmet" was a bit of false advertising, as I think most real warriors would probably make their helmets with less stuffing).

6:15 – Get home. Sigh out loud at the thought of a 3 mile race taking over 6 hours out of my day.

So while the race was at times an enjoyable physical challenge, it didn't really compensate for the mental challenge to my patience (of which I have little). I would do a race like this again, but only under 1 of 2 conditions.

A – We get a heat on day #1, preferably early in the day. Better in-and-out access, and better course conditions.

or B – Someone else drives, and we bring enough road “sodas” to compensate for the aforementioned lack of patience.

Item #33 - Interstate Video Game Tournament

"Fuck this game. I'm going to Linda's"  -Matt B

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Not to sound too much like an 80's stand up comic, but there are certain things that most guys just seem to hate or avoid, with seemingly no rational reason as to why. For me, one of those things has always been feminine products. I mean, I've been working in the medical industry for almost 6 years. I've worked in a gynocology division. I've become intimately familiar with the inner working of a 70 year old woman's cadaver torso. And after enough cadaver labs, I got used to it (at least as much as one can get with a 70 year old dead woman's vagina). But when I agreed to live in an apartment with 2 girls last year, my first rule was that all feminine products had to remain out of sight (and they eventually were, tucked away into “the cabinet which I do not open.”). No rational reason as to why I was freaked out by the idea of a cylinder of cotton . . . but I was.

Another harmless thing that I, and many guys, seem to despise is the idea of meeting new guys. I'm a fairly friendly fellow. It takes a lot me for to actually dislike someone. But despite the high odds that I won't have any problem with a new male, I have no desire to meet any more. My quota of good guy friends has been met. Actually, it has been exceeded, thanks to having seemingly 3 different lives and circles of friends that continue to exist, and that occasionally overlap (high school, college, Boston). My quota for guy acquaintances has been met. I don't need any more added to my life. So I have no desire to meet any more dudes. No mas.

A Random Sampling of the Friends Venn

But recently, my inner nerd-dom actually trumped my distaste for meeting more guys. (WARNING – if you have any preconceived notions about me actually being cool, please stop reading. Go elsewhere. Go to Facebook. Go look up porn. Just leave. Leave the mythical Cool Alan in your mind while you can, because you're about to get all up in my nerdiness).

Background: In college, we had a thing for playing NHL95 on Genesis. At the time, it was already 4 years old. But, it was OUR game. Nothing to do on a Friday night at The Red House? Get drunk and play NHL95 while watching Matt get so pissed he pulls the cartridge out of the Genesis, throws it into the toilet, and flushes (the game couldn't be flushed. It was recovered. It still worked). Good times were had by all.

We played that game throughout our junior and senior years. However, after graduation, we started the tradition of The Baseball Trip, in which at least 6 of us get back together and get drunk at various ballparks throughout the country. I'd talk more about it, but I'm hoping there's a list item that covers the inner workings of the trip later on. For now, we'll concentrate on the fact that instead of taking in whatever local culture there is in a given city, we typically go to games . . . and then come back to the hotel room, drink Keystone Lights and get loaded while playing some hardcore NHL95 games. This tradition had continued for the past 11 years. Oh by the way, I'm 31 (yet how am I single?).

And despite being 31 years olds playing a game made for pre-teens on a game system made popular in the early 90's, we take our NHL95 very serious. And a couple years back, while researching the game, Walter stumbled across a website made by some kids in Minnesota (Segathon.com). They apparently had 1-2 big ass tournaments each year in which they gathered 10-20 of their closest friends and just got drunk and had marathon sessions of NHL95 on multiple TV's. True dorks . . . and we had to beat the shit out of them if we ever went back to Minneapolis on the baseball trip. And this year, we went back to Minneapolis.

So 2 months prior to the recent baseball trip, while drunkenly watching the Bruins playoff game, Walter emailed them and challenged them.

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From: Walter
Subject: NHL 95
Date: Saturday, April 2, 2011, 12:06 AM

Hey Rookies.  We love your site.  We've been following it for years.  Great jerseys! Me and my friends from Boston go to different baseball parks each year.  We play NHL 95 all the time.  This year we are going to Minesotter and would love to play your best opposition in a tournament and drink 1000 beers.  We are tentatively planning  the weekend of June 17th and would love to meet up and play.  Are you available? All the best! Walter

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From: The Commish

To: Walter

Subject: Re: NHL 95

Date: Monday, April 4, 2011, 5:12 PM

Walter,

As soon as I saw you were from the Boston area my heart filled with RAGE as you have stole David Ortiz, Kevin Garnett and Randy Moss but then gave Randy back.  But I remembered you are a NHL 95er and looks like you are a fellow pollack like me so we're cool

I have sent out an APB to fellow Segathoners to see if we can do a tourney and will get back to you.  Let me know your guys schedule for that weekend and if you were looking to do a day "gentlemans" tourney or a night "worst hang over ever" tourney.

Thanks,

Nick 

ps - if this is some type of trap, us Segathoner's carry under $20 and are certified in man-rape self defense classes

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And just like that, it was on. And just like that, for the first time I can remember in a long time, I was damn excited to meet a group of guys, because based on their website, all we could assume was that these guys were us, except that they probably spoke like they were in Fargo. Granted, there was a 1% chance they were a bunch of sexual deviants looking to tie us up in a basement and go all Pulp Fiction on us, but we were willing to bet on the side of good natured Midwesterners on this one.

Despite the fact that the majority of us traveling to Minnesota were actually from Detroit, in the emails leading up to the battle, we played up the whole from-Boston aspect of the challenge. We used names like Butchie, Sully, and Tommy. We proclaimed the greatness of the Bruins. And I eventually walked into the tournament wearing a Red Sox Trot Nixon Jersey. In the words of Jon Lovitz . . . ACTING!

And they were good natured Midwesterners. They booked the backroom of a bar for an entire Saturday. They booked a keg. They booked appetizers. And they drank like champions with us. So let's go to the pictorial diary, because I know you're all just DYING to know the results of an video game tournament held in some dive bar in the middle of St Paul for some obscure video game made 17 years ago.

2:00pm – Walter and company go to Target. They buy materials to make a lifesize Stanley Cup to bring to the event to award to the team champion.

 

There were 2 competitions that night. One giant tournament to determine a single champ, via round robin format and double elimination tournament. The second was a team challenge, in which they had their 9 guys play our 9 guys in single games. Ryder Cup-esque.The "stanley Cup" would go to the champs.

2:45 – We take a stretch limo the 10 miles to the bar. Classy? . . . classy.

 

3:15 – We arrive at the bar and . . . they aren't sexual deviants. They are 30 year old professionals that like to get drunk and play a kids game for hours on end. They are us. Nerdy enough to be hardcore NHL95 gamers. Cool enough to get drunk and talk shit all night, without sounding like douches.  We bond immediately and feel like we've known them for years. It's delightful.

4:00 – Game on. You would think that a hockey game made in 1994 would be pretty straight forward, but when you play for 17 years, and play the same people for the last 12, you learn a shit ton of intricacies. And going into the tournament, we had no idea if their style of play would match up with ours. Would we be the only ones that know that taking the goalie vastly improves your defense, or would they know some tricks of the trade that would put up 15 goals a game against us? MY GOD, THE ANXIETY! MY GOD, THE NERDINESS!

In the first game of the round robin, our #1 ranked player Walter (yes, we each ranked our 9 guys. Deal with it) takes on their #1 guy Nate. Walter ends up winning 2-0, and team Minnesota is in shock. We're riding high.

For the next 3 hours, 54 games of NHL95 are played in the round robin tournament across 5 TV's. It's truly glorious.

 

7:00 - After the round robin, Team Boston is taking care of business. Our top 3 players have dominated the round robin play by going 6-0, 5-1 and 5-1 (I was one of those 5-1 records. Hooray). Team Minnesota is still stunned. They're like Rocky taking on Drago . . . at least in the early rounds.

 

But instead of deep down and finding their intestinal fortitude like Rocky, they resort to fighting back via another method . . . drinking.  They order a round of car bombs for both teams. We line up in waterfall fashion for a flip-cup style race and . . . .we're soundly defeated by 1 length. Momentum begins to change.

8:30 – The Ryder Cup challenge ends with a crash and burn. It was 3-3 after 6 games, with me, Matt and Walter left to play. Our 3 horses. Our studs. . . . and we were soundly beaten 3 games in a row. I went down 3-1 to their leader, Nick. Team Minnesota takes home the aluminum foil Stanley Cup. Egos are badly bruised.

 

9:30 – I get some modest revenge, and I knock out the aforementioned Nick in the winner's bracket of the double elimination tournament. Luckily for me, that sets me up to play Nate, their #1. We give the fans a little something special, and put on in epic 9-8 showdown . . . which I lose. Down to the loser's bracket. Another loss would end my gaming night.

10:30 – In the only ever Baseball Trip sanctioned NHL95 tournament back in 2005 or so, I went undefeated, finishing off Walter and Matt in back-to-back games to take the title. History would somewhat repeat itself, as I eliminate Walter and Matt once again in back-to-back games. In doing so, I'm now the only Boston rep left in the tournament. I am The Chosen One. Walter has passed the torch.

 

10:45 – The Chosen One has had way to much to drink to concentrate on team strategy, and The Chosen One is absolutely destroyed by Nate in a game that was over at the first drop of the puck. Team Boston, and its collective ego, is no more. In terms of hardware, Mighty Casey had struck out. Nate would go on to beat Brandon and take home the singles title.

 

Trophies by damned, I did alright for myself. 5-1 in the round robin. Against their 2 best players, I won once, lost 2 one-goal games, and suffered 1 red-headed-stepchild-esque beating. But, I did get to knock out both Matt and Walter, which means I'll get to hold this over their heads for the rest of their lives. I'm 31 and sans girlfriend/child/pet – this is the glory I get to cling to.

But, I also get to cling to the fact that as sad as it may be for a group of 31 year olds to get drunk and get overly worked up about a 17 year old video game, at least there's a group of Minnesotans, our brothers in NHL95 arms, that are just as pathetic as us.