MIT Brawls, Fantasy Fishing, and Electric Snakes
Red Sox mania is in full swing, and for good reason - a 10.5 game lead on the Yankees in May is definitely cause for celebration. To give you an idea of how nutty people are for the Red Sox here, MIT runs a discount ticket office for students, employees and even much-maligned affiliates such as myself. Generally, if you want a ticket to something, you just go to their central desk and pick it up. For the 1800 Red Sox tickets they had acquired (and, just to be clear, you still have to pay face value for them - this is just for the privilege of paying for them), they had to run an on-line lottery to "prevent incidents" of people in line. I can see an MIT brawl now... watch the glasses and the pocket protectors fly! Duck, here comes a calculator! However, to my enduring bitterness, I lost the lottery while an Israeli post-doc colleague who knows nothing about baseball won... sigh. However, through the questionably legal pathway of ticket agents, I did acquire reasonably priced tickets to see the Jays game a couple of Mondays back at Fenway, so I guess it turned out OK. Fantastic game too - the Blue Jays won 7-3 and I was heckled by the standing room only creatures for cheering for the Blue Jays with the insanely creative chant "Go Leafs!" (give that guy a Pulitzer! - of course, I guess he thought the hockey comment would be the ultimate insult to a Canadian). However, I think the funniest exchange was a text message conversation we were having with my Bible study leader. After the game, we wrote something to the effect of "And, lo, on the first day, the Blue Jays shall defeateth thy Sox - Fenway 7:3 (with the chapter/verse representing the score) - I thought I was pretty clever. Then I got his reply... "Evidence for the fall". Nicely done.
Last time I posted I asked two theoretical questions, whose answers I will now discuss: (1) I decided that 17 hours round trip driving to attend a fantasy baseball draft in person was, shall we say, unwise (particularly when Skype worked so brilliantly until the final round of the bench draft... I blame the lack of communication capacity for my stinker pick of Pedro Feliz). However, despite an incredibly slow offensive start (and a still wretched batting average), my team (the MIT Geek Squad... seemed appropriate) is now bobbing between third and fourth place and not completely embarrassing itself. Assuming a couple of my team members who have decided to forget how to hit (I'm talking to you, Garrett Atkins and Carlos Delgado) rediscover their abilities, I might not break down in sheer sorrow prior to the All-Star break. On the other hand, if worse comes to worse, I can always just slide over on the ESPN website to play... Fantasy Fishing! Seriously. (2) I determined that $150 was a reasonable price for the entire 137 episode collection of Get Smart episodes, only the finest sitcom ever produced. I have only watched about a dozen episodes so far - it is interesting how many wildly politically incorrect lines are included which would cause the heads of today's censors to simulatanouesly implode, but the comedy is pure gold. Favourite lines so far: "Max, if it will make it easier for you, I'll take an 8D" and "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that was an electric snake!" Yes, I realize that out of context these excerpts are completely incomprehensible... but trust me, comedy gold!
Tomorrow: Unique New England Experiences!
