Beat LA! But Not Because I Told You So. Only If You Feel It.

Kind of giddy today about the prospects of Banner 18 for your Boston Celtics. And it got me thinking …

When I was in the 8th grade, the Celtics and Lakers engaged in an epic, 7-game battle. (It was 1984. Yes, I realize that makes me almost 40. Shut up.) I remember the afternoon of Game 7, being giddy with anticipation, and not knowing what to do with it. It was all we talked about all day — yet the game wasn’t starting for at least nine more hours. We were sitting in the cafeteria at the then Northborough Middle School (now the Robert E. Melican Middle School). In my mind, I am sitting with the cool kids, but in reality, I was sitting with the … um … other members of the cockamamie “GAIN” (Gifted Academically in Northborough) program, I’m sure.

And out of nowhere — this “Beat LA!” cheer started — I’d like to think I started it, but I’m pretty sure someone cooler did. Anyway, it began slowly, then built momentum until all 400 or so of us were chanting at the top of our lungs.

It was the second-greatest chant I’ve ever been part of. The three-way tie for first:

• A “No Means No” chant when Kobe was at the line during Game 6 of the 2008 Finals at the Garden;
• Two one-man chants comprised entirely of, well, me — my drunken rant during Wil Cordero’s first trip back to Fenway after the team released him for being a horrifically abusive husband (“Hey, Wil, you know what you did! It was horrible! You can’t run from what you did, no matter how hard you try!”), and my less emotionally-charged (but certainly biologically important) “Here We Go Urine, Here We Go!” chant at Foxboro Stadium from the back of an endless line for the urinals).

Now, I ask, could this (the unprompted “Beat LA” cheer, not the urine chant) happen again?

Given that the Garden crowd can barely shout “De-Fense” (arhythmically, as this is a Boston crowd) without being reminded by the ludicrously huge New Garden HD JumboTron, I wonder if today’s kids could start a chant as wonderfully non-contrived as that thunderous “Beat LA!” in my 8th grade lunchroom without any sort of prompting. And that makes me sad.

And now, queue one of Bob Ryan’s wonderfully angry columns decrying “game presentation” …

Frozen Waffle Rememberance Day

This day always makes me a bit melancholy.

For it was on this day in 1986, the day before Thanksgiving, while working the crowded afternoon and evening shift at Northborough’s now-defunct Julio’s Supermarket (although the liquor store in Westborough is doing quite well), I inadvertently ruined a pallet of store-brand frozen waffles by leaving them sitting on their pallet in the frozen food aisle (not the freezer) for three hours when I was called up front to bag groceries. I had been stocking the freezer and forgot about them; they, unfortunately perished.

Yes, it was a simpler time — no choices between paper or plastic, no credit cards for groceries, baggers who would load groceries into your car, plenty of “This Lane Closed” signs featuring the iconic KOOL Menthols logo, paisley ties on the baggers and cashiers, double-coupon Wednesdays, $3.35/hr. wages, etc. — but what does remain a constant is this: frozen waffles left sitting in an aisle for 180 minutes will melt. Which will cause certain tempers to heat up.

Mr. Colangelo, you were a very busy man, running a three-supermarket empire, yet you still managed the time to come to your smallest store that day.

Where you were met with a pallet of now soggy waffles.

If you are still alive, sir, I again empathize with your anger for the loss of inventory — those delicious, melted squares never had a chance to absorb syrup or magically come back to life in a toaster. Although, we may have rushed them back to the cooler in the back of the store and re-frozen them. I forget, actually. Perhaps I’ve been carrying this burden for 22 years for no reason.

Nonetheless, that said, let us never forget. And please, if you love your waffles, keep them frozen. Until it’s time to eat them. Then you should probably toast them.

Rigor Artis

 

The only point I want to make about turning 38 is this: Artis Gilmore seemed absolutely ancient when he arrived to the Celtics in 1988 as a calcified backup center (backing up young whippersnapper Robert Parish, then a spry 35 or so). 

Gilmore was 39.

Ouch.

You try dragging Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes

So in order to get hyped up for tonight’s big Game 5 of the Celtics (surprisingly difficult) first-round matchup with the Hawks, I started watching the NBA’s 7-DVD set of the 1986 NBA Finals (featuring my all-time favorite team, the 1986 Celtics) [note: gratutious reference to me working out coming ... right about now] while on the eliptical this morning. Although I loved all the players (particularly scrubs like David Thirdkill and Greg Kite, perhaps my limited skills made me aspire to someday be bench fodder) I really loved Bill Walton — he came to the team that year as a cagey veteran hungry for one more title in his injury-riddled career (I loved him, although not as much as the Boston fans; is it me or is there a tinge of racism when Walton gets such a huge hand when he replaces Robert Parish? And wait, that team had, what, 8 white players? Maybe that’s why they were so beloved. Wow, now I feel guilty). I was 15 at the time and remember thinking that Walton was ancient.

Do you know how old he was?

Wait for it.

33.

I am currently almost 5 years older than him.

*Sigh*

Reveal codes

The launch of Corel’s WordPerfect Office X4 and this great blog entry from Laptop on WPO X4′s WordPerfect 5.1 "throwback" mode got me to remembering this: in college, lo those many years ago, my friends and I had a "WordPerfect Drinking Game" (even cooler than the "AP Style Drinking Game") built around the venerable WordPerfect 5.1 and its key-codes.

We’d take turns shouting out a function ("Print!") and you had to come up with the key-commands for that function ("SHIFT-F7!"). If you didn’t, you had to drink. It got tricky once we got beyong things like spell-check ("CONTROL-F2!"), particularly if we didn’t have one of those handy keyboard templates lying around.

Amazingly I didn’t have a girlfriend for much of college.

On this day in 1996 …

… I completed my DC tax return on a counter at the Union Station Post Office at around 11:53 a.m. Evidently there was a shortage of DC tax forms that year, at least at the libraries and post offices in the white neighborhoods Ward 3 (shocking that Mayor Barry would allow that to happen), so I didn’t track down a form until around 9 that night. It got confusing given that my employer was in Maryland and I had to pay taxes to the District and somehow get reimbursed from the State of Md. This year, I am much more prepared … because someone else actually prepares the forms.

Even my subconscious knows I’m old

I had this dream last night that I was packing up to return for my final year at GW. As I was sitting in my childhoom home putting together a duffel full of sheets and clothes, my brain started telling me, "Hey wait, you already did your senior year at GW, and that was in 1991. It’s 2007, old man." Then my dream got kinda weird as it tried to align that fact with the story line it had planned. Perhaps it is all due to a desire to return to the fall of 1991, one of the best times of the second phase of my life (if my life were to be broken up into three phases; childhood, blossoming into manhood and being a crotchety grown-up trying desperately to be as hip as I believe I was in the blossoming phase).

Reppin’ 508

Some highlights from our active day yesterday out in Central Mass under crystal-clear sunny skies on a wonderful example of Indigenous Peoples’ Summer:

• Using the new 146 Connector between the Mass Pike and I-290, finally providing a direct link between Boston and Worcester via Interstate highway without all sorts of backtracking. I always found it odd that Springfield gets 3 Pike exits, Wormtown none, but I digress.
• An excellent brunch with many old friends (4 couples and, let’s see, 8 kids, wow) and lots of great food at Chez Lindberg-Paradiso in Worcester. Hard to believe that friendships bourne of the fact that no one else would hang out with the 4 of us in high school still go strong today. Among topics of discussion: 1) It’s not smart to tell your female spouse that, in re: to childbirth, "Honey, if I could carry the child for you, I would," because should they ever invent time travel and the technology to allow men to carry children, you’d be screwed; 2) Yes, Tintin au Congo appears to be pretty racist, even given the excuses offered up for the time in which it was written; and 3) An update on Tammy and Family’s efforts regarding the Eat Local Challenge;
• Some wholesome apple picking and goat-watching with my folks at Tougas Farm in Northborough; try the galas, you won’t be disappointed.

Got back late, put the boys to bed and blazed through the recording of the Pats clobbering the hapless Buffalo Bills while cranking out an analyst presentation. Yay Sunday night.

617 in tha house

Apropos of nothing to do with the hideous Michael Vick situation, I read somewhere that his ne’er-do-well brother Marcus had 757 tattooed on his arm to represent Newport News, his home. Which got me to thinking — what if they overlay a new area code over 757? Does he have to get a new tattoo? Or will he keep it real with a throwback 757 phone number?

The whole overlay concept makes me feel old. When I was a kid, Massachusetts had two area codes — 413 for Western Mass., and 617 for the rest of the state. Then 617 was split into 617 and 508, which marked the debut of New England Telephone’s catchy "July 16 is the date, when Worcester goes to 508" slogan. Now there’s a slew of others — 617 was split again into 617 and 781; 781 added the 339 overlay. And then 617 added the 857 overlay (The WordNerd was the first person I met to score an 857 number).

Back when area codes only went up to X19 (219, 319, 419, etc.) I used to have a RainMan-like ability to identify area codes ("302?" "Deleware!") … not unlike my RainMan-like ability to memorize WordPerfect 5.1 commands ("Print?" "Shift-F7!").

I am told I had memorized the license plates of all of my neighbor’s cars when I was 5. Which is funny, given that I couldn’t tell you the license plate on my current wheels.

1985 is to 2007 at 1963 was to 1985. Wow.

In the car on the way to work, I heard The Time’s "Jungle Love," which is a great song (admittedly, the overly-synthesized R&B sounds a little dated, but that’s a minor nit) that was popular during my freshman year at the mighty Algonquin Regional High. It was great (hearing the song, not remembering my freshman year).

Then I realized that that was 22 years ago. That wasn’t so great.