Saturday, October 09, 2004
Happy birthday, Kate!
I realize now that my last post was, ah, a bit incoherent. I was exhausted and flooded with adrenaline, which is apparently not a good combination for writing. Jun lives on my floor, around the corner from me. He is from... somewhere, not Boston, but he's a huge Red Sox fan. James is his friend who lives in Markley. He's from Waltham, and is also a huge Sox fan. Sharonda is a girl who lives two doors down from me, who is normally pretty nice but I guess doesn't make allowances for playoff games. That ought to clear that all up.
I promise that this entire post will not be about baseball. However, the Red Sox game last night put us firmly into the ALCS with a sweep of the Anaheim Angels, sending their precious rally monkey home after having had his knees broken by a violently-wielded thunderstick. Oh, the irony. The Yankees just won tonight, so that means that on Tuesday the ALCS starts. 8 pm. Fox TV. Schilling vs. Mussina. I'm sorely tempted to skip art lecture, since if I went to that I wouldn't get back to the dorm until sometime between 9 and 9:30. I wouldn't miss much if I did, it's the single most useless class in the history of the world... no one even knows what we're supposed to be taking notes on in class. The professor just talks on all these tangents that have nothing to do with art no matter how far you try stretch it. Then again, maybe I'll just take my computer to class and throw myself on the tender mercies of the room wireless internet. We'll see. We'll see.
I guess I'm sorry about the Twins losing, since I always feel bad when the Yankees win over anyone, but to be perfectly honest I'm not sure I could take one more announcer talking about the turf at the Metrodome. Once a game, fine. Constantly throughout every game? Not fine. Most emphatically not fine.
I think I've reached the conclusion that, win or lose in the ALCS, win or lose in the World Series, I frelling love this year's Red Sox. Yes, love. "Why?", you ask (actually, I'll bet you're asking, "Dear god, why does she feel it necessary to talk about baseball again?"). This is why. Abject apologies to those still stuck in the dial-up Stone Age.
We have the best hair in baseball.
From left to right: Kevin Millar (the frosted tips and Amish beard look), Johnny Damon (the Jesus look), Bronson Arroyo (the cornrows that horrified Terry Francona), Pedro Martinez (the jerri curl).
Our players like each other and aren't afraid to show it.
From left to right: Millar and Manny Ramirez, Manny and Millar again, Pedro and Millar (I guess Millar likes hugs), Alan Embree about to get a comraderly noogie from Jason Varitek.
We don't take shit from anyone, be they the media or the other team (i.e. the Yankees, but you know).
From left to right: Gabe Kapler being restrained by Tim Wakefield during a Sox/Yanks fight, Curt Schilling wearing a shirt that reads 'Your lips keep moving but all I hear is blah blah blah', Varitek socking it to ARod, Damon yelling something at an umpire.
That said, we know how to have a whole heck of a lot of fun.
From left to right: Various team members showering Manny with champagne, Pokey Reese and Orlando Cabrera doing their special dance, Manny on a motorcycle (no, I have no idea what's going on here), Pedro with goggles on and a bucket over his head. Yes, you heard right.
Oh. And, you know, we can play baseball too :)
From left to right: Damon watching his hit soar, Schilling pitching, Cabby leaping over a runner, Doug Mientkiewicz making a bunt, Manny smacking it out of the park.
I guess you know you're a fan when you can spell 'Mientkiewicz' correctly without consulting anything. I've seen him referred to in other blogs as Doug Malphabet, which is amusing, and should give you an idea of how hard it is to spell that name if you're not really used to it. If you spend useless lectures writing the Red Sox postseason roster down over and over until you can do so alphabetically (much to the amusement of your classmates, who occupy their wasted time by doodling, surfing the 'web, reading magazines and, in one case, knitting a very long bright purple scarf-- I assume he was in a fibers class), you gain some familiarity with the names.
But look, that's it! I'm not going to talk about baseball any more this entry! I won't talk about the game at all, or how I watched most of it with Brad, the kid on my hall I felt really bad about for not knowing his name because he clearly knew mine and used it to hail me all over campus. I was sneaky and walked to his room with him, so I saw his name posted on the door and now am all set in that respect. That's it. I'm done for the day.
Can someone explain those Coors Light ads to me? Can beer actually taste cold, even if it isn't? Because I find myself rather skeptical of this. And does shipping it in cold trucks make that much of a difference? And does using the same footage of a truck in your commercial, only putting a red filter over one and a 'blue ice' filter over the other really make good advertising sense? Might people not realize that YOU WERE SHOWING THE SAME TRUCK? Might this not undermine your whole advertising point?
Today was the Michigan/Minnesota football game. It was also Homecoming, but we pay no mind to that. All it means is that there were tents set up for the old people in a lot of fields, the old cheerleaders and band members got trotted out at halftime, and the frats had a lot of people with thinning hair standing around holding cups of beer and peering bemusedly (or perhaps just nearsightedly) at all their raucous young 'brothers'.
Minnesota is a good football team. A really good football team. They may have the inexcusably lame team name of the Golden Gophers, and their symbol might be a sadly bastardized version of the Michigan block 'M', but they can actually play, and were ranked one above us before this game. It's possible that they could have won this game if it had been played in Minnesota.
Happily, the game was played here. And it's always a little harder to win when you're in the Big House and you're not a Wolverine. It's not unheard of, of course, but it's just that much less likely to happen.
In any event, LOOK WHAT WE'VE GOT! Heh. The Little Brown Jug is ours. Again. The game was a bit of a nail-biter, but we pulled it off. And Braylon Edwards did a backflip at the end, which is simply wonderful. Would we have won this game in Minnesota? Maybe. Maybe not. But the game was here, and we did win it, so that's all that matters for now.
Oh, and Leslie came and sat in our section! Great fun. The game is much more fun to watch with Leslie around, I must get tickets with her for next year. I also really need to start sleeping and eating well the night before the games, because this whole 'becoming dead while at the game' thing is starting to get really old really fast. Note to self for future games: If you don't drink anything in the morning and then go stand in the sun all day you WILL get dehydrated and you WILL NOT enjoy it.
The next home game is Michigan State, so I will bring my camera to that and regale you all with photographic glory. It's not for a few weeks, but just so you can work yourselves up into an anticipatory frenzy.
Oh, here's something interesting. There are 32 teams in the NFL. Only 7 teams do not have a single former Wolverine on them. Can you name these clearly evil teams? The team with the most Wolverines on it is the Pittsburgh Steelers, with 4 (although one is only on the practice squad). Answers at the end of the blog, but don't cheat, try and see if you puzzle it out on your own first.
Tomorrow the Lions play the Falcons. Can they win? Well, anything's possible. The Lions are certainly better this year than they have been in a while, but whether or not this is enough to competently take on Michael Vick and the Falcons I can't rightly say. The Patriots play the Dolphins, looking for 19 straight wins, which would be the record. Ironic that they're playing the Dolphins, the only team to have had a perfect season, in the game that would win the Pats the record. The Patriots are favored to win over the ailing Dolphins, but the Fins defense is still pretty damn strong, so who knows, things could very well get interesting.
The Detroit Free Press had a good editorial in it about why college football is better than professional football. Read it, it's pretty funny and dead-on for some things. 'Course, I like pro football probably more than I like college ball, but that's just me. It's still a good article.
Holy blibbering fucksocks, Jose Lima just finished up his 8th shutout inning in the Dodgers/Cardinals game. Wonder if they're gonna leave him in for 9 and see if he can get the game. Yowzers. And the Dodgers had been looking so whipped in past series games, too.
In other news, uber-good comic book artist Mike Wieringo got a kitten, artist extraordinaire Ryan Estrada has been living on the street in Japan and I actually have no idea how he's staying alive right now, Les McClaine's Johnny Crossbones comic is coming out beautifully, and Frickles Mudcat flipflops on land, but not on the issues!
Wow, that does it, Jose Lima, complete game, 5 hit shutout of the Cardinals. Yowzers. Lima brought the expensive cheese. Heckuva game, that was. Congrats to LA fans, you've got ample reason to be proud of this. Ha ha, he's talking to the announcer, and he's really excited and singing.
Oh, and Farscape fans out there: the magic day is Sunday, October 17, 9pm.
Classes are boring, and everything else I've been doing lately is work or watching the games with people. So that's about all I have to say for now. Football tomorrow, good times for all.
*Which NFL teams don't have any former Michigan Wolverines? The Vikings, Panthers, Ravens, Rams, 49ers, and the Titans. Everyone else has at least one. Is there another school that has so thoroughly saturated the league? Yeah, I know, Miami. Whatever. We still rock :)*
6:03 PM
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