Plumbing the Depths of D-Baggery at MSG

Preface: The following article contains disparaging remarks about the Ivy League and Ivy students/alums. My criticisms, obviously, do not apply to all people associated with these schools, as I have friends who have attended these institutions and have come out as thoroughly likeable, normal people (you know who you are).

Last weekend, my girlfriend, my friends, and I trekked into New York to watch BU take on Cornell in the "Red Hot Hockey" event at Madison Square Garden. We headed into the city some time before the game in order to give our best rendition of, at least for Giselle (my girlfriend, although I'm guessing both of my readers already know this) and I, "Small Town New England Yokels Hit The Big City." This was largely accomplished by craning our necks upward rapidly to gain perspective on the size of skyscrapers. Even after having lived in a decent-sized city for four years, the sheer size of everything in New York (buildings, crowds, odd smells) is almost incomprehensible, so the small-town role was quite easy to play, and I am quite surprised that I am not currently in a neck brace. Still, I was able to accomplish some key Manhattan tourist objectives before the game, including the following:

• Purchase a "Who Dat Ninja" magnet at the NBC store; stroll into the GE Building (aka "30 Rock"), casually point to the elevators and bust out with "OHMYGAWD THAT'S WHERE CONAN AND TINA FEY TAKE THE ELEVATOR BECAUSE WALKING UP THE STAIRS WOULD BE TOO FAR," or something like that.
• Check out the tree in Rockefeller Center, and realize that, when not lit up, it just looks like a big fucking pine tree, similar to those around my parents' house.
• Have my heel trampled by roughly a bazillion people in Times Square.
• Be yelled at by a homeless man that "COKE IS BAD BUT WEED IS GOOD AND WE NEED WEED." You know what else we need? Showers and better dental care.
• Eat at White Castle, not contract E. Coli.

Through all of this, the true highlight of the day was the hockey game itself. It certainly lived up to its "Red Hot" name, as both teams had red in their uniforms and I was quite warm under my jersey. In all seriousness, it was a great game, particularly as BU blew out Cornell, 6-3,  providing an extremely satisfying victory. I do have a certain abhorrence for Ivy League schools, which, I must admit, partially is the result of being rejected by Harvard on two separate occasions. Regardless, this hatred has been more than backed up by my experiences with people from these schools, who seem to hold the opinion that those of us who have not attended an Ivy League institution are dumbass trash. These Ivy Leaguers were on full display at MSG last Saturday. I'll go into it a little later.

I initially realized I was in for one hell of a time when I took my seat and was immediately screamed at by a group of 6-8 year-olds sitting directly behind me.

"SCREW BU! BU SUCKS!"

This was roughly an hour before the opening face-off, mind you, so I figured this was just their reaction to BU fans entering their section, and they'd tire themselves out or otherwise be distracted within a few minutes. I was wrong (As an aside, what the fuck parent allows their children to shout stuff like that at a sporting event? Something like "Let's go Red" would have been entirely acceptable, but there is absolutely no way, as a child, I or anyone I know, would have been able to get away with yelling the word "screw" or "suck" in public. If I had pulled that shit at a game, my parents would have yanked me out of there before I could have even got to the 'w' in "screw." These parents did absolutely nothing but sit back and laugh. I'm guessing later they will be mystified as to why they can't control their kids.).

Eventually, after about the 7,000th "SCREW BU," I decided to do what any responsible, mature adult would do. I (and my friends) matched wits with those little brats and drove them into the ground. Our first strike was made as the players came out for warm-ups. Like any responsible fans in the joint, we stood and cheered our team. As the crowd settled down, I came to the realization that, as I am 6'4" and the munchkins were pushing four feet at best, the kids couldn't see the ice when we all stood (Any normal person would have figured this out immediately, but my mind is too full of random geography knowledge, classic TGIF facts and English Premiership scores to function properly). So we did not sit down, and the "BU SUCKS" chants turned into "SIT DOWN" screams, because God forbid those kids miss warm-ups. I think this just made these brats angrier, because after we got bored and sat back down (maybe 5 minutes later. Oh so mature.), I heard this:

"THE 'B' IN "BU" STANDS FOR B-E-T-C-H!"

Of course, I had to goad the kid on. "That's not how you spell 'bitch'."

Silence. But only briefly.

"HEY, WHAT DOES THE 'B' STAND FOR? B-WORD?"

"Which b-word?"

He glanced back to his parents, who expressed varying degrees of not giving a crap. "Um, nothing."

And so the "SCREW BU" chants started anew. It was time for us to pull out the big guns. We all knew what to do.

"THERE'S NO SANTA!" clap clap clapclapclap... "THERE'S NO SANTA!" clap clap clapclapclap...

As I turned around, I saw the look of dismay on the children's faces as their parents rushed to explain that we were lying. "Hey, you should shut up if you know what's good for you," I heard form the row of kids. From then on, not a peep was heard from the gallery behind us. We had won. Our rag-tag group of college graduates had successfully bested the 6-8 year olds.

Sports are kind of an odd thing. Games both bring people together and can prove extremely divisive. There's a huge mob mentality at sporting events. Sometimes, it's a wonderful thing. Other times, you'll end up chanting to a bunch of kids that there's no Santa Claus. 

I think that something you learn as you grow up is how to ultimately separate yourself from the team at the end of the game. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't celebrate when your team wins or be upset when they lose, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't be a passionate fan. It's just that people seem to get so wrapped up in their identity as a fan that they forget when the game ends and continue their grudges against other fans indefinitely. This was particularly true for the Cornell fans on Saturday.

Personally, I have no problem with catching stick from the college/recent alumni demographic, because, when you're that age you're kind of expected to be an ass. However, after the game, it was Cornell-supporting middle-aged adults who gave us the biggest problems. Furthermore, if I spent my time gloating as I left, I'd totally expect to be given a hard time. In this case, all my friends and I did was engage in normal conversation, so I don't think we should have been given all kinds of crap on that end, either. I could write pages about all the unwarranted "You suck"s (mind you, BU won 6-3) we received as we exited the Garden, but I'll just discuss the most egregious example.

A few blocks away from MSG, a Cornell jersey-wearing lady broke away from her children, power walked up to us, and exclaimed "I HOPE YOU HAVE A HORRIBLE DAY!" I had no idea even how to react. Evidently this lady was angry enough about the failure of men wearing shirts with "Cornell" on the front to put a small rubber puck into a net more times than men wearing shirts with "Boston" on the front that she was willing to ABANDON HER KIDS in order to wish random people ill. Something about priorities comes to mind here. Now, honestly, I wasn't really offended about any of this, but I was a little surprised at how these people's passion for a hockey team turned them into complete dicks.

Anyway, back to the whole "Ivy League Superiority" thing. On of the most frequent things I heard from middle-aged Cornell fans after the game was "We're smarter than you." In fact, on the way back to the train from MSG, ANOTHER person broke away from their group to inform us of this. Again, this came from someone who was with their family. I've seen this arrogant attitude time and time again, and I think this is another one of those "grow up" things. I know intelligent people who dropped out of High School, and I know idiots who attended Ivies (i.e. our president). Out in the real world, one comes to the realization that intelligent people come from all walks of life. Evidently, in the insular world of the Ivies, where, apparently, one is constantly reminded that they are the best and brightest (I wonder if they are forced to listen to the "You're the best... AROUUUND" song from Karate Kid on a constant loop), students fail to realize this fact. Andrew Bernard on "The Office" provides a perfect example of this sort of air. 

And so it was, to further reinforce his belief in his own superiority, a father needed to remind us (and himself) of his own intelligence in New York on Saturday. I wonder what this man is like in his everyday life. Would he not accept medical advice from a doctor trained at Johns Hopkins because he is "smarter" then the doctor? If his kids end up going to a state school, will he consider them failures?

I don't really know the answers to those questions. I guess, since I didn't attend an Ivy league school, I'm not smart enough to figure it out. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

WTF, World: Volume II

First off, I apologize for the lack of update last Friday. I'm sure all three readers of this site were most upset. Back to normal schedule this week, starting with the second installment of "WTF, World."

You'll probably notice a trend in that things that piss me off. Usually it's the sports media and people who try to force religion into science/politics (Note: I am both religious and a scientist but NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET).

First off this week is this excellent example of why I hate many mainstream sports journalists. I love how Conlin covers his tracks by busting out with, essentially, "My pro-Hitler comment was okay because I have Jewish friends." But just as importantly, the dude completely lost his mind because OH NO SOMEBODY DISAGREED WITH HIM ABOUT SPORTS. The whole saga is handled beautifully by The Dugout (which is probably one of the reasons the internet was created by Al Gore and Pete Townshend).

Thanks to RationalWiki for this bad boy from the New York Times. This article makes both PhDs AND URI grads look bad. Awesome. My personal fave, though, is the section dealing with the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky (which received over 250,000 visitors in 6 months OMGWTFBBQBACON). Here's a quote:

The museum sends the message that belief in a young earth is the only way to salvation. The failure to understand Genesis is literally “undermining the entire word of God,” Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, says in a video. The collapse of Christianity believed to result from that failure is drawn out in a series of exhibits: school shootings, gay marriage, drugs, porn and pregnant teens. At the same time, it presents biblical literalism as perfectly defensible science.

If bible literalism must be heeded, why aren't the people behind this museum growing out their beards and stoning adulterers? OH SHIT GOD HATES YOU NOW.

And finally, I realize that this document (pdf) is a little thick, but the key thing here is that Michael Vick killed dogs "by various methods, including hanging and drowning." It's old news, but Vick and his accomplices are just fucking despicable. This story pisses me off on so many levels that I can't adequately describe it without going into a several thousand word diatribe. I also hate the whole "He's being crucified because he's a black athlete" bullshit. Just stop. I don't care if your name is "Ron Mexico," such cruelty to animals is always wrong.

WTF, World: Volume I

I've decided to make Wednesdays "WTF, World" day here on I Got Words. Each week I'll try to post a few links that, in general, frustrate me to the point where I have a minor aneurysm. The principle behind this is similar to when I used to watch "Rich Girls," even though I knew it would piss me off. It's difficult to explain, but, hopefully, you catch my drift.

These people are in charge of the science education for an entire county. Evidently science shouldn't be taught properly in Polk County because some concepts "[cross] the line" for Christians. Props to Brenda Reddout, though, who personally believes in intelligent design but doesn't want it taught in schools because of that whole "Separation of Church and State" thing.

Evidently, this article is good enough for a major media outlet. Just utter tripe from Jim Caple. I've been getting fed up with ESPN for the past few years now, and finally snapped with the whole "Who's Now" crapfest. My feelings about this one have absolutely nothing to do with me being a Revs fan, either. This piece is just plain old lazy. Caple needs to realize he's getting paid to write and put some effort into his work besides "Making boring quotes with fake names based on Metro Boston geographic and social terms." My writing isn't so great either, but, then again, I don't get paid for it.

Wow. Just Wow. I forgot that this man's word regarding scientific principles is more reliable than that of thousands upon thousands of scientists. A brief rundown here. Dinosaurs=dragons. Plants didn't die during Noah's flood because the water wasn't stirred enough. Radioactive dating doesn't work because C-14 dating can't accurately measure the age of dinosaur... I mean dragon... bones. The last one holds a special piece in my heart because this man clearly doesn't understand the principles of radiometric dating, but can pretend to because the bulk of the public doesn't, either. I could go on and on about this one, but I'd just be filling up your screen with acres of boring text (like my man Caple above). I'm also, evidently, part of some super secret cabal of scientists who try to convert America to atheism and sponge up research funds.

Do They Make Pink Celtics Jerseys?

This morning , the Boston Globe posted an article stating that all but a few hundred of this season's Boston Celtics tickets have been sold. Obviously, this is a great thing for the franchise, as more tickets sold means more money, and the team once again gets to perform in front of a packed house full of rowdy, drunken, Massholes ("Yah Doods" would also have worked there, if you're keeping score at home). Some of these new ticketholders may be able to identify Rajon Rondo. Others may even be sober enough to drive.

Where were these people last year? Oh, right. They were at home going nuts about Red Sox trade/free agent rumors and making claims like "The Celtics have become irrelevant." Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to turn your head without seeing someone going "OMG KEVIN GARNETT!" (Note: I tend to shout this myself). Merchandise sales have boomed, as tons of people are rapidly shopping for the latest and greatest Celtics jerseys to match their pastel Red Sox hats.

Frankly, I'm a little bitter. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely NO WAY I want last year's squad back, and I am absolutely desperate to see the team hoist a 17th banner up to the rafters of the hallowed... erm... TD Banknorth Garden (which I, for some reason,  still call the FleetCenter), but I could do without the bandwagon fans (press included).

Admittedly, I am quite new to having bandwagon fans follow my team, as, traditionally, every team I support blows. The Celtics last won a championship when I was 2 years old. The Bruins and Orioles (My dad raised me as an O's fan because, evidently, he wanted me to become jaded and eventually hate baseball. Mission accomplished.) haven't won one in my lifetime. The 49ers (Again, a product of my father's influence) were quite successful when I was too young to appreciate it, and have since spectacularly fallen from grace. Save a few anomalies, for about the last 10 years, the results of all four of these teams have oscillated somewhere between "awful" and "heartbreaking." As such, the only fans of these teams I have come into contact with have been of the diehard sort. 

I've tried to pinpoint the source of my frustration towards bandwagon fans, and the best I could do was to develop an analogy.

CAT:KITTEN::FRANK LAMBERT:?

A. J.T.

B. MARK

C. CODY

D. DAMMIT SCOTT NOT ANOTHER "STEP BY STEP" REFERENCE

Wait, that's not it (the answer is 'A', by the way).  Here we go.

Let's say you're restoring a car. Over a long period of time, you invest a lot of time and energy (and usually money) into this process. Sometimes things go well, and other times they don't, but it's your car, and you love (hopefully in a platonic sense) that thing. After all of your effort, the car ends up looking, sounding, and driving great. Obviously, you, and anyone else who helped work on the car will take great pride in this fact and celebrate accordingly. At this point, someone else, who used to remark at how ugly the old car was, notices the finished product and asks to be taken for a ride. Although you may be driving, and it is you who restored the car, this other person spends the ride cheering, leaning out the window screaming "YEAH, BABY, OUR CAR RULES!", and, for some reason, clapping thundersticks together. This other person starts chatting people up about how awesome "his" car is and how he has "been there from the beginning," even though he had never invested nearly an iota of what you had into that car. After some time, he now drives the car with you as the passenger, and you continue to put your energy into keeping it running. Eventually, he takes the car out with his other friends enough to the point where you no longer have the opportunity to drive it. You still work on it at night, and continue to bask in the glow of your shiny automobile, but most of the time you can now only admire it from afar. Eventually, the car begins to break down while the other person drives it. They move on, forgetting about the car, but you are still there, ready to put your energy back into making it great again.

Hence, now I can't get C's tickets because some jackass is driving my car.

In the end, you are free to support whatever team you want, and it wouldn't be right to stop you. But diehard fans put a lot into their teams, and it's tough, from our perspective, to accept bandwagon fans who only show up for the good times. 

Especially when they buy up all our tickets.

I Am Cursed

Let me explain.

First off, I have to say that my curse isn't some weird sort of deadly one, like in that Stephen King story/film "Thinner." If you haven't seen/read it, the story goes as follows:

This fat dude is getting roadhead and accidentally mows down a Gypsy woman, killing her. The woman's father, who is understandably upset and just happens to be a VERY POWERFUL SHAMAN (which movies have taught me is the case for all old Gypsy men), curses said fat dude so that he keeps getting thinner and thinner, regardless of how much he eats. Eventually, the (formerly) fatty is able to convince the old Gypsy to transfer the curse to the world's most threatening item, A PIE. Instead of destroying the pie by methods other than eating, which would be entirely logical, he feeds it to his cheating wife (who has low standards, as evidenced by the aforementioned roadhead incident). She fails to eat the whole thing, however, (OOOH OMINOUS FORESHADOWING), and fatty puts the pie back into the fridge, not wanting to waste baked goods. Unfortunately for him, his daughter also accidentally eats a piece, because, you know, who doesn't love pie? 

I think the moral of the story was that Gypsy (or Romani, if you will, but I won't) people should learn to not jaywalk.

Anyway, back to my own personal curse. It's tough to talk about, because the gravitas of the situation is unbearable, but I'll give it a try...

Nearly every TV show I like will be prematurely cancelled. 

The proof is in the pudding. "Arrested Development" (best show ever, in my opinion), "The Knights of Prosperity", "The Black Donnellys", "Life on Mars", and "Keen Eddie" (I could be here all day, so I'll quit there), among others, have all been cut off before their time. I think "30 Rock" will likely be added to that list, as its path seems oddly similar to that of "Arrested Development". On the positive side, I have been lucky enough that "The Office" has survived and is still funny. Still, it seems the vast majority of the shows I like are doomed for failure (Look out, "Carpoolers" and "Pushing Daisies"!).

It makes sense, though, because lord knows we need more time for recaps of "Dancing with the Stars" and 3-hour blocks of "Ugly Betty" and "Grey's Anatomy." Also, 3 CSI shows is definitely not enough. I can't wait for CSI: Dubuque to premiere in 2009. I've heard it's going to revitalize Mark-Paul Gosselaar's career.

Honestly, I can't really figure out why some of these shows got the boot. Is something like "Journeyman" (ironically, a poor version of the superb "Life on Mars") really a more viable show than "The Black Donnellys"? I've certainly never met anyone who has excitedly run up to me and asked anything like "OMG DID YOU SEE 'JOURNEYMAN' LAST NIGHT? HE WENT BACK IN TIME AND THERE WERE ZACK MORRIS CELLPHONES AND MWEEEEEEEEH..."

(Yes, I realize that is the second Zack Morris reference in this piece. I need to get a life.)

Likewise, it doesn't seem that the populace is rising up with a huge "Thank Jesus!" to Fox for throwing the money they would have spent on "Arrested Development" into useless pap like "'Til Death." 

Actually, I'm wrong here. The great American public has risen up. With their remotes. Overwhelmingly so, in fact.  Whenever a smart, funny show comes on the screen, the bulk of America evidently says "Screw this, it's time for 'Are you smarter than a 5th grader?'" and changes the channel. Sadly, for most of those people, the answer to that show's title is "No." These are the same people who sell out Carlos Mencia shows (I guess he's just too REEEEAAAL FOR MEEEEE, HOMES). I could start casting lightning bolts right now with a statement like "...and this is why Bush was elected to two terms," but there is another time and place for such rhetoric. 

This is why the Writers' Guild isn't in the best of positions with their strike. While shows that require coherent writing are on hold, producers can just fill up our nights with "Celebrity Fart Contest" or "Synchronized Swimming with the Stars," and America will eat it up.

The viewer will still miss two types of shows during the strike, however: crime dramas and hospital-based shows. Think of all of these on the air right now (ER, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, House, 3 each of CSI and Law & Order, the list goes on and on...). Based on these trends, I've come up with my own guaranteed smash hit...

It's a crime drama set in a hospital. I've been racking my brain to come up with a title, and the best I've come up with so far has been "CSI:ICU." I also thought maybe we could run the two abbreviations together so make one thing like "CSICU," but that kind of looks like a chat meme from a 12-year-old's AIM convo.

dirtbikesrfun: hi school musical rulz

hannamontanaluvr: O RLY?

dirtbikesrfun: ;)

hannamontanaluvr: CSICU

dirtbikesrfun: lol ur sn sez "anal"

hannamontanaluvr: brb chris hansen is here

hannamontanaluvr: /is a 40 year old man

And our children are a little bit safer.

So it seems that the colon is entirely necessary in the title. Anyway, the show will feature this group of cops who specialize in hospital murders, as well as the doctors at that hospital. There's gotta be some sort of romantic tension between one of the doctors, who is good looking but is clumsy and has absolutely no self esteem, and a police officer who is a total beefcake but has no sense of humor, and who, whenever he arrives at a crime scene, needs to slowly take off his sunglasses and say "My God." He needs to be given a nickname by the doctors like "Officer McStudley," too. The murders always need to be exceedingly gruesome and the killer always needs to have some sort of weird MO. Like in one of the episodes the murderer makes earrings from his victims' eyeballs or something. Oh, and in the pilot, the good-looking-but-no-self-esteem doctor wants to ask McStudley on a date, but OH NO SHE IS THE CHIEF SUSPECT.

My God.

The First Noel

I'm going to start out with a short one today.

To the best of my knowledge, we (and by "we" I mean Southern Rhode Island) are supposed to be hit by something resembling Hurricane Noel tomorrow. The reception by the area's meteorologists has been, at best, apathetic. Here's an actual quote from NBC 10, the local NB affiliate, regarding tomorrow's forecast.

"Friday will be the calm before the storm as we are watching now Hurricane Noel move north - parallel to the East coast. We will likely see a very gusty wind Saturday and there is a high potential for periods of heavy rain particularly from Narragansett Bay eastward through the Cape. ALSO: DON'T FORGET TO TURN THE CLOCKS BACK ONE HOUR SATURDAY NIGHT/SUNDAY MORNING."

Note: I did not add the caps at the end of that passage.

In other words,

A hurricane is coming BUT REMEMBER TO PUT YOUR CLOCKS BACK BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T YOU WILL WAKE UP AND YOUR CLOCK WILL BE WRONG AND YOU WILL FEEL LIKE AN ASS.

Thank you, NBC 10.

Now I realize this isn't necessarily the most devastating storm, but it isn't that often we see something even remotely tropical in these parts. This is, unless you count the radio commercials for anything involving Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, or Nantucket, which inevitably feature Caribbean music even though it is probably fifty degrees and rainy there right now.

The last time one of these storms hit land around here, I was playing high school football. School was cancelled that day, but we still had practice, because ONLY MEN WITH VAGINAS DO NOT PRACTICE DUE TO SOMETHING AS SISSY AS A TROPICAL STORM. As I was not, and am not, a hermaphrodite or post-op tranny, you better believe I showed up to practice that day and participated in drills with goals like "Get a Concussion" with great aplomb (Seeing as I use the word "aplomb," it's pretty obvious why my football career did not last beyond my sophomore year). At that point, I should have realized that folks around here just don't give a shit about tropical storms, thus negating the reason for this post.

I guess I'll see meteorologist Kelly Bates at football practice tomorrow. 

-Scott