Comic for Monday, August 28th, 2006

Posted: 12:01 am, Monday, August 28th

So, I'm back from Upstate, after one of those wonderful drives that was full of inexplicable delays on the highway. The sort where you find yourself wishing, as awful as it is, that there is a huge pile-up with corpses strewn everywhere and flames shooting high into the sky just so there's a single damned reason for the last five miles having taken a hour to traverse. No explanation was forthcoming, though. Over the last 140 miles of the drive from Albany back to Brooklyn, we averaged less than 40 mph, all on the highway. Spirits were not high.

But the reunion was a Flinstones-esque gay old time, so that's nice. I went to a really small high school, 72 in the gravitatin' class, and I hear that we had 35 Class of '96ers there. Because my high school was so small, it had this weird version of clique-ishness... Basically, everyone got along with everyone one-on-one (with, obviously, some exceptions), but when, say, it was two friends from the 'bad' kids and one from the jockos, or two jockos and one 'bad' kid or something, then all hell broke loose and people mocked and whatever. So it was really nice to see that everyone actually got along. No one seemed to feel the need to rehash any long-standing drama or confess some long-held affection or anything ridiculous like that, which was a relief.

The event was very oddly held in a Best Western, which was kind of depressing, and for once (trumpets blaring) I was not in the slightest bit underdressed. In fact, my buddy Chef, who is far more stylish than I am, was going to show up in jeans and a t-shirt 'til I talked him into a suit. "Are you kidding me? I have to wear a suit to a Best Western in the fuck-all middle of nowhere?" I don't know why we had it in the Best Western - the gym would've been so much cooler.

But, we all gathered in the Best Western, I saw a lot of people I actually hadn't seen in ten years (in addition to being small, my high school drew from three far-flung towns with no bars in them, so there's no central meeting point everyone just gravitates toward over holidays), everyone's hair is significantly better than it was ten years ago, this one girl Sue hasn't changed in the slightest and she still rather scares the hell out of me in a friendly way, and most of the class has already procreated, many twice. Also, one of the 'bad' kids offered 2.0 a joint and not me, meaning that things haven't actually changed all that much.

We went to one after-party, skipped the second, and made it home in one piece. One my buddies made it to the second one and seemed much worse for the wear yesterday when I stopped by his parents' house to meet his kid. Only one guy got on me to marry 2.0, which was bullshit because he had been dating his girlfriend for something like seven years before he gave her a ring, and I called him on it. Also, I have evidently grown a lot since high school. I didn't think this was the case, but freaking everyone mentioned it, so it must be true. Good times, I guess.

Aside from that, the Hill was pretty boring. It was like fifty and rainy all weekend, so there wasn't much to do except drink coffee and do puzzles. I did two puzzles while we were up there. Yeah, seriously, it was exciting. I think I'm good on Upstate 'til Thanksgiving.

So, moving on, shit yeah, we're under the 240-hour mark 'til kickoff. Today's Daily Irish is a quick stroll down memory lane, even if the memory I thought I had was completely wrong. OK, so, I could've sworn I was in the stands for this game, but that doesn't appear to have actually been the case. In 2002, Ty's first year as coach, when we started off 8-0 and then he went 13-15 the rest of his career at ND, we closed out the home schedule by cremating Rutgers 42-0. This was not as impressive as Lou's last game (which I got kicked out of), a 62-0 shellacking, but, still, Ty's pretty fortunate to break 30 points and he'll take it whenever he can. So, in garbage time, because it was senior day, Ty realized he should play the scrubs and the walk-ons. And so there's this tiny friggin' running back put in, and he just goes nuts. Six carries for 52 yards, this guy gets. The crowd just went bonkers for him. He's tinier than Rudy, he's tinier than Joey friggin' Getherall. (He was a wideout/PR for the Irish - returned one against Nebraska in the game that Davie went chickenshit during and decided to play for OT instead of try to win it in regulation. You'll never believe this, but we lost that one. Getherall never once took a fair catch - that kid was solid gristle.) He's Timmy O'Neill, five-six and 165 pounds of ass-kickery. How the hell that guy hung with the walk-ons long enough to get into a few games his senior year is beyond me. But, I can evidently read all about it, because he's written a book (in which he stresses that, no, he's not like Rudy). Better yet, it's got a forward by the one, the only, Ted "Theodore" Hesburgh. I fucking love Father Ted.

And, since I was slacking the past few days on it, here we go with a nightmare real quick - it's just a random kid from my high school, evidently the first kid at Berne to ever aspire to be a rapper. He is, of course, as white as the new-fallen snow, and, I have to imagine, a real fucking winner.

Back with less rambling no one cares about tomorrow, and more linkage. I hope.

bullfrog

One of the ESPN writers predicts that Notre Dame will face LSU in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Are you in good hands? Let's hope Joe Buck and Tim McCarver aren't calling the play-by-play for that one.

I on principle will never go to my high school reunions because I never did like my high school. It has some really bad kharma. About twenty kids died close to or after graduation, including one girl who died because her oval-shaped head was putting too much pressure on her brain. Another person (neighbor actually) was arrested and convicted of murdering his step-father, and making it look like someone else did it about six months before he could have graduated. The school itself doesn't acknowledge validictorians or salutatarians. No matter what you think about such petty matters, it's tradition to have such things and you should not have something like a validictorian or salutarian. (And I keep misspelling the words.) They had for the last couple of years acknowledge a list of the top ten GPA graduates, but they're probably thinking about removing that because it hurts the people who are finished 10-25. But that was after our class was through. All in all, it was acknowledge that my class of 1993 was the worst class ever and I'm not going to mess with that kind of bad kharma.

Oh, man, this is too awesome. From Deadspin over the weekend, apparently the Pittsburgh Pirates hired Me First and the Gimme Gimmes to play a postgame firework show of some sort, for three games. The crowd did not go for it. I like the publicist's answer - "why they hired a punk band is beyond me." That's hilarious.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06238/716572-63.stm

My school changed the venue for graduation from up on the Hill to this fantastic structure in Albany called the Egg after my class graduated, because too many drunk hillbillies showed up for the ceremony my year. And the year after I graduated, some kid the next class down was arrested on something like 217 counts of sex abuse towards minors (whatever the charge for that is called). Aside from that, not much going on.

I am embarrassed for any author who uses in his teaser excerpt the line: "But, this book is not the work of Milton; it is simply the story of a journey I embarked on when I was five years old. Notre Dame stuck to my heart then, the same way cotton candy sticks to a little boy’s nose. "

Sorry, but that sounds like I wrote it. not a good thing.

dude, you'd be hard pressed to find a better place than upstate ny for the autumn leaves. (tho NE is close) but for sure, the apples, cider and the like that is stuff about the fall up here that's a must see. if you wait 'til end of nov, then you'll miss the prime leaves to peep.

Didn't say I *would* read about it, MNP - just that I could.

Yeah, the upstate leaves are pretty kick-ass. 2.0 and I will probably go leaf-peeping at some point during the autumn, but probably only as high up as New Paltz. Between visitors, trips and my unwillingness to stray from the couch on fall Saturdays, getting all the way up to the Capital Region qualifies as too much for the next few months.

"Leaf peeping?" Sounds like a new line of candy from Cadbury. (Cadbury...it's not just that clucking easter bunny anymore.)

Yeah.. It's a Northeastern thing. "We've got a ton of leaves right outside our door.. Let's drive three hours to take an hour and a half drive at fifteen miles per hour to go look at more leaves." Of course, doing this puts off completing fall chores. Most of which involve raking leaves.