Just Another...

Cool Monday. IF and I hit the gym at 6:30 in the AM and got a pre-day workout it, which was very cool; I ran, she ellipticaled. I made the brilliant decision of wearing my shorts to the gym - it was 8 degrees with a windchill of 0 K when we left the house this morning, so the post-run sweaty Nyet / frigid air combination was less than awesome. As Ringo might say, "I've got blisters on my nipples."

I headed down to the 'Nut for a day that should have been 50 minutes long a grew into a beast with meetings and the like. They were hella productive, but still, 'twas lame. My class itself involved me chewing them out for not doing the blog assignment, and then leading a pretty decent discussion on reliable and unreliable sources. Fun times in there, and I have them reading a DFW essay this week - given the high ESL content of my class, that may have been a bone-jarring mistake. But we'll see.

I eventually left the campus, heading back into the snot-freezing New England winter. I had some time to kill, so I headed to the Framingham Library to pick up some music and a bunch of books - I'm dumb, I know - but I will now force myself to read said books int he next couple of weeks. It's a sports departure, just to give you a preview.

Oh, and what music did I pick up? A couple of Prince albums. Why? Because of this, that's why:





Best Halftime Show in a loooooong time. Prince, you rock my face. Seriously, this was spectacle of the highest order but totally appropriate, and no malfunctions either, unless you consider the blatant use of guitars as phallic symbols to be malfunctory. More on the SB itself in a bit.

So one of the books I got is Baseball Between the Numbers, one I've been meaning to grab for a while now. And funny enough, the library had it listed under one "James Click" as a primary author. no... it couldn't be, could it?

Actually, I knew very well that it could, given Mr. Click's sports-numbers obsessions reported in years past by one Mike NTPB. So I called up the Mike to confirm, and indeed, this was true. Awesome! This is the most humble shout out to James, who was a great friend of Mike's at Yale - living the dream man, and that is fantastic. I look forward to reading your articles, and will rip you to shreds if necessary on this here blog which, given its readership of probably no more than 20, will cause you to lose something approximating no sleep. Seriously, homes, congrats. That is good stuff.

The call to Mike was awesome, too, because it allowed us to catch up on james's hijinks, his recent trip to SA for our CHS '96 reunion, as well as give each other notes both on our greatest art debate and our classes. SWEET! This is awesome, and if I were slicker, I could probably write this into a resume as some kind of interscholastic collaborative course design program. (Note to self: do that). Regardless, the convo was awesome - I've always felt like Mike and I bring a lot to the proverbial table and balance each other really well in terms of optimism / pessimism, real politics / theoretical background mumbo jumbo (I'm the latter on both counts, as if you didn't know), but it more or less always brings my geist back into alignment to have a good chat with him. And a good chat we did have; T-mobile be damned, we talked quite a bit. And yes, IFfy, I will cover that part of the bill.

More notes - Mike gave a hilarious account of the ill-attended HS reunion, which I will post as promised, but only AFTER he provides me with photographic evidence. the reason for this largely has to do with a string of quotes like "She was a 9 in high school, but she's an 11 now." That meat-market and clearly irony-laden comment is clearly not to be taken seriously. (But, red-blooded male readers, that previous sentence was to avert all XXs' attentive eyes, the blog equivalent of a shouted "Look! Over there! McDreamy!"; fear not, NTPB and I do not throw around the term "11" lightly, and so you should be now duly enticed. We're talking football post-game party Vacekian levels of excitement, so don't miss it).

(Previous joke will only be gotten by NTPB, but it is so, so worth it. Ah, Miguel, I cry for you, too; the lesson is, gather ye rosebuds, or Carpe Jamie, whichever version you prefer).

The oddest thing of all of this is that on the Monday after the SB, Mike and I talked that long and did not once mention the Super Bowl. WOAH! Clearly our intellectual stature has grown (or our athletic one has shrunk, it having been recently been exposed to the cold ocean). So that was nuts. As for my take - who cares! It was a tremendously exciting first quarter followed by something of an extended yawn; I think the Colts RB's deserved the MVP way more than Peyton pretty boy (if for no other reason to discourage further endorsement deals - it's not a good Porn unless it's a Peyton Porn, etc.), and as I've been saying all season, Rex Grossman is TERRIBLE, and not to get all emotion-aspect on you, but it just looks like he couldn't care less about the whole spectacle. Which you can't really blame him for, given this year's commercial output. I will, though, give props to

The Blockbuster Mouse
Garmin Navigation Maposaurus
Budweiser Dog With Spots
Emerald Nuts
And maybe the Jay-Z commercial

(And of course, the GoDaddy commercials, you crazy 11-obsessed males, you). Not really.

That's about it; it's dinner time here. I'll leave you with one of my favorite Onion articles and the brief instruction to read the comments of past entries for lots of insight from the readership, especially Karen, who continues to kick all of your collective asses.

I leave you with... Laser Cats 2: