Why I'll never be on Fear Factor

Well, amongst other things, I'm probably no longer considered cosmetically good-looking enough to be on the show. Seems they are now gravitating towards supermodels, or women who look good in bikinis. Well, I fit into neither category, so I guess that rules me out.

But the #1 reason I would never go on the show, as I re-discovered last night, is the "disgusting eating contest" that they have every week. See, it's not just that you would have to eat goat scrotum in front of millions of viewers, but you have to be the fastest goat scrotum eater of them all. I would hate to swallow my pride (amonst other things), dig in, chow down, and then lose the competition. I mean, seriously, who wants to be the second fastest goat scrotum eater at the table? Doesn't it have to be all or nothing? Wouldn't you hate to finish that disgusting task only to discover that you're still going home because Billy Bob from Sheep's Ass, Nebraska beat you out with his last-second gulp down?

And then you lose and get to go home, no prizes, no money, just the ignominy that comes with having the whole country watch you chow down on goat scrotum. I don't even know if they validate your parking after that. You're gone. History. Winner gets $50,000, which I still haven't determined to be enough money for somebody to have to go through that. But they do.. every week. Somebody out there wants to do it. It's just not me.

And in case you're wondering, yes, this article does set a modern-day record for using the expression "goat scrotum" the most times.

From Cursed to First

What a difference a year makes. At this time last year, I was sitting at my desk, near catatonic, reflecting on the latest in a series of crushing Red Sox losses. It's funny how the demise of your favorite sports team makes you sit and reflect upon all that's good in your life. Thankfully, I had a lot of things to be well, thankful for. There was my loving wife of now 6 years, a huge Red Sox fan, almost as disconsolate as I (if not more so). There was our brand new puppy, a mini-dachshund named "Fenway" Frankie that helped take some of the sting away. But all in all, it was a bleary time for me, us, and the rest of Red Sox Nation.

But something changed this year. I don't know, maybe the fact that the guy that used to live in Babe Ruth's old house got hit by a foul ball off the bat of Manny Ramirez. Maybe it was the fact that that same house in Sudbury got bulldozed before the start of the playoffs. Maybe it was all of the Sox fans doing their little idiosyncratic things, like always wearing their "lucky" shirt or "lucky" hat or sitting in their "lucky" chair. Or maybe it was the fact that our center-fielder looked like Jesus.

But regardless of how it happened, something really tremendous happened. The Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. Read that last sentence again. Yes, Boston's most beloved team finally came through when it mattered, and made history in the process.

A few weeks ago, we were all feeling some of that same pain from a year ago. "Damn, those Yankees are going to beat us again, and this time we're not even going to win a game!" And with team doctors telling us all that Curt Schilling might not pitch again this year, didn' t you think this team surely had to be cursed? I mean, who else does that ever happen to?

But Schilling came back, and so did the Sox, giving us all the most memorable ride in Red Sox history in the process. To come back from a 3-0 deficit against your arch rivals, that bully that's been shoving your head in the toilet all those years, was breath-taking to say the least. I like many others, watched every inning of those last 4 games as we all refused to let go of this team we all loved so much. Not only could we not stand to see them lose, we couldn't stand to see them not play any more this year. They meant too much to us.

That's how the personality of this team was this year. You couldn't dislike them. And they never played tight either. As this team went on and won the World Series, I couldn't help but think: they probably would have won the '86 Series as well. I mean, they just never got worried, never got down. They always knew how to take one game at a time. If this group of players had lost Game 6 of the '86 Series in the same manner that it played out in reality, I've got to believe that they would have bounced back and won Game 7. That's just the kind of crew they were. That's just the kind of faith they inspired.

On the eve of the Series-clinching win against the Cardinals, the famous Red Sox message board on SOSH (www.sonsofsamhorn.com) had a thread about for whom people wanted the Sox to win the Series. Last I checked, it's at about 54 pages long. I could barely make it through the first page. There were people who wanted to dedicate the win to people like Johnny Pesky (held the ball too long in '46), Bill Buckner (didn't get a hold of the ball at all in '86), and Mike Torrez (who let Bucky get a hold of one in '78). But more endearing were the fans who wanted the Sox to win it all for their father, who died of cancer the year before and didn't get the opportunity to see it happen in his lifetime, or for their grandfather who rooted loyally for them for many, many years and never saw that effort bear fruit. I immediately thought of my two grandfathers, both Red Sox fans who were the ones who really turned me onto to following baseball and the team. Both of them have been deceased for some time now, not getting to enjoy the Sox finally make it to the top of the mountain. On Saturday, after the parade, I made sure to buy them each a pennant to place on their graves in celebration. My wife Cindy gets credit for the idea, as she herself bought one to put on her grandmother's gravesite.

But that's what citizenship in Red Sox nation is like. Everybody walks, talks, and thinks that way. I'm sure when we go about the business of visiting the gravesites that we will see many before us who have already had the same idea. I couldn't tell you how many co-workers during the time of the playoffs came by to talk about them with me at length during the course of the day, some of them even invoking their deceased relatives who were attempting to wrestle the curse out of Babe Ruth up in heaven. There was the number of work-less hours due to some caucusing to concoct a game plan for how the Sox were going to come back from a 3-0 deficit... if only they could get their pitching lined up right. Or then there was my morning ritual during the playoffs of going to McDonald's to get breakfast (because they seemed to win when I did that, another part of being a crazy Sox fan) and talking for a few seconds with the cashier about the game coming up that night. There was the drunk fellow that we bumped into at the victory parade, so giddy with success that he decided to buy my mother-in-law breakfast because he felt like that was what he could do to contribute to the celebration. Last week, when I was in Florida, thousands of miles away from Boston, I saw many of the people there wearing Sox shirts or hats commemorating the championship and exchanged knowing glances with them as they noticed me in the same gear.

It's one big family. One big crazy, superstitious family. But now we're not dysfunctional anymore. We've finally done it. (And yes, I can say 'we'.) All of the superstitions and rituals and praying finally paid off for once. The curse is finally broken. Babe Ruth can rest in peace, never to meddle in the affairs of our beloved team again. We've lost our inferiority complex and we've lost the terminology "Wait till next year!". This was the year. No more will we have to hear the chants of "1918" or see pictures of the Babe hung up all throughout Yankee stadium. No more documentaries on us being "loveable losers" who can never win in the clutch. Weary, bleary eyes can be replaced with tears of joy. As Bill Simmons from ESPN's Page 2 so adequately puts it, "we can go back to just being a regular team, just like everybody else".

After the World Series was over, one of my co-workers said to me, "I finally opened that bottle of champagne that I started chilling back in 1986".

I asked him how it tasted.

"It was the best glass of champagne I've ever had".

I raise my glass along with him and many, many others, and toast the Boston Red Sox, 2004 World Series Champions.

Drunken Bowling -or- The Time Peter Ran for Troy City Council

Back in the college days at good ol' RPI, our group of friends had a tradition on Saturday nights called "Drunken Bowling". Now I'm sure that we didn't invent anything new, as many before us must have been able to come up with the brilliant idea of getting drunk and then bowling. However, it was still fun to see what kinds of havoc you could wreak at the bowling alley when you're totally intoxicated. Especially when this alley is in downtown Troy, NY.

Drunken Bowling or "D 'n' B" as we also affectionately called it, would typically begin at about 9 or 10 at the bowling alley bar. You see, the actual bowling alley promotion was that starting at midnight on Saturday, you pay like $7 and then you get shoes and unlimited games until about 3am. They kill all the main lighting and fire up the laser lights and the disco balls and the loud rock music. It was that kind of cosmic party bowling for people who really could give a rat's ass about their scores.

We would spend a couple of hours in the bar getting ourselves all liquored up and ready to bowl come midnight. Depending on our mood and motiviation, sometimes we would stay at the bar all night and forget to bowl... which is pretty sad since the bar has giant windows which look down upon the alleys. So it's pretty hard to forget where you are and why you're there. Typically, we would pass the time by playing drinking games or cracking the door to either the men's or women's bathroom and screaming "Happy Birthday!" (More on this later.. maybe). Drinking games would usually involve a rousing game of "I Never" or "3-Man" or simply playing pop-a-shot basketball in the corner of the bar.

Editor's Note: If you haven't played "I Never", it's the game that gives you a great opportunity to discover which states your friends hooked up with other people at what time and in how many ways. People would say something like "I never have hooked up with two people on the same day" and then anybody who had done that exact deed would have to drink. If the statement was so obscure that nobody had done it, the person who said it would have to drink. Since I used to like to drink and be a smart-ass at the same time, I would say stuff like "I've never spanked an Amish man"... because I had never spanked an Amish man, and typically no one else had either.

Okay, so about this Happy Birthday thing (why don't I just tell you what that's all about?), there was one time we were there to celebrate our friend Heather's 22nd birthday. We came down to the lanes with a big banner that happened to say "Happy 22nd Birthday Heather!" and hung it up in the bar where we proceeded to drink under it for a couple of hours. Well, one of the "guests" didn't realize it was a birthday party until he was leaving at the end of the "bar portion" of the evening. He looks at the sign that's been hanging there all night and says calmly, "I didn't know it was Heather's birthday." I should also point out that he was from southern California. With the birthday girl in the bathroom, he decides to run over, open the door, and shout "Happy Birthday Heather!". We were all dumbfounded. Drunk, and yet still dumbfounded. We of course then decided that it was funny to do to other people all the time. People I know still f***ing do it to me.

Well, when midnight rolled around, we'd get our shoes and our lanes and begin the task of entering our names into the electronic scoreboard. This was typically the highlight of the night as we would compete to see who could give who the most family-unfriendly nickname of the night. One of our female friends got the handle "One million served", while another got saddled with "Pledge F*cker". "Bent Choad" and "Amtrak Blowjob" also got some repeated play. So, you can imagine when a strike was bowled, how hilarious it was to look up at the scoreboard and see "Strike Pledge F*cker Strike!" flashing on it. It's amazing we didn't get kicked out.

As the games wore on and the drinks kept coming, our skills rapidly diminished. It didn't stop us from doing all sorts of trick shots that would end up two lanes over, clanking off the pin sweeper, and rolling halfway back down the alley. It's always fun to have to explain to the guy behind the counter that you need to get your ball back because you were being stupid.

Towards the end of the night they would hold a raffle based on tickets you obtained when you paid for your shoes. You could win all sorts of shirts and key chains with beer logos on them. Since we made up most of the clientele, we would usually rack up pretty well on the prizes. I think I still have 2 or 3 Twisted Sheila's Tequila or Honey Brown tee-shirts somewhere in a box in my basement.

At 3am-ish (and it varied from week to week), they would kick us out, forcing us to go to our next establishment: "I Love New York Pizza". This was a great pizza joint in downtown Troy that was open until around 5 in the morning. It was nestled between a couple of Troy's "finer" dance clubs and it was the only place we knew of that you could walk into and say "1 hot cheese/cold cheese please" and they'd know what the hell you were talking about. They would take some of their cheese pizza that had been sitting there on the counter, throw an ample handful of grated cheese on the top of it, and throw it in the oven for a minute. And I don't know if it was the alcohol or what, but at that exact moment, it was the most delicious thing in the world. My arteries harden just thinking about it.

As there was very little seating there, we would do what everybody else would do, stand outside and eat it on the street corner. The corner was usually packed too, as people from the clubs would pop over and grab something to eat. It was a pretty cool atmosphere down there.

At one point, our friend Peter started shaking people's hands as they were leaving the restaurant and saying "Hello, I'm Peter such-and-such, and I'm running for Troy city council". Awesome, just awesome. I don't know that anybody believed him, but they were probably all drunk too, so all bets are off. Either way, it was hilarious.

It's 3am, I must be lonely

Once in a while here at work, we have to test the software we write out on the actual system that it will eventually be running on, and that system is locked behind closed doors and you have to sign up for time to use it. Well, last week I signed up for a number of shifts out in the "lab" and waited with baited breath last Thursday morning to see what shifts I had been assigned. Turns out, I got no love.

Three midnight to 6am shifts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Ugh.

Oh well, I guess I'll make the best of it. I'll kill myself trying to stay awake, but I'll get some good work done and enjoy some nice quiet time.

So on Monday, I work a full day till about 5:30, come home, eat, and take a nap for about 3 hours. My wonderful wife Cindy had been out running around while I was taking my nap, putting together an "overnight survival kit" to bring in with me. It wasn't until I hopped in my car at quarter to midnight that I saw the kit sitting on the passenger's seat. I couldn't wait to open it up and see what was inside.

First of all, there were about 10 to 12 DVD's in there that I could watch on the PC with the DVD player. This is key, because in the absence of any live person talking to you to keep you awake at oh, ass-o-clock in the morning, you need the movies to provide a little background noise. There were many good ones to choose from... I picked "The Ladies Man" (severely underrated), "Zoolander" (probably accurately rated), and "Van Wilder" (one of my personal favorites after "Old School").

Secondly, there was enough food in there for me to actually live in the lab for a week. I'm not kidding. All sorts of yummy snacks from Poppycock (that's right, I said it) to Bugles to Milano cookies, a couple of different chocolate bars, Pop Tarts, Ritz cracker sandwiches, chocolate-covered pretzels, Jolt caffeine-laden gum (2 kinds), Vivarin, Tums, Excederin, Immodium... all sorts of good stuff. I was ready for bear.

So I get to the lab, unlock it, drop my stuff down, and get to work. I put on "The Ladies Man". Let me tell you, testing your software is fantastic when you've got Tim Meadows saying stuff in the background like "It sounds like you have a case of homo-unerectus, which means that your wang is huge-i-fied not by a woman, but by a man". Can't help but crack up when that comes on.

I'm snacking on Bugles, making good progress when the first movie ends. Now I'm so spoiled that when I leave the immediate area of the PC, I pause it because I don't want to miss any good lines. I put Zoolander on. That "walk-off" between Zoolander and Hansel is hilarious. "Stay out of this Billy Zane!" Priceless.

At this point, after the snacks I've powered down, and the 3 Coca-Colas I've chugged to stay awake, I really have to use the men's room. Problem is, lab procedure dictates that I have to put everything away and lock it back up when nobody is present. Which of course is a huge pain because I'm coming back in like 5 minutes to set things back up the way they were when I left. Oh well, at 3am I don't have the luxury of having anybody hold it open for me while I duck out.

Now, because they have continuous air flow in order to keep the system cool, the lab makes a lot of wierd noises. And in the middle of the night when you hear something creaking or crackling or whatever, your neck whips around to see what it is. Usually it was nothing. One time I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and jumped a little, but it turned out to be nothing. I thought I was hallucinating. Oh, and I also had the lights off in the place. It was basically being lit by several monitors that were spread throughout the room. No need to fool myself into thinking it was daylight out by putting lights on. Wouldn't want to do that. Plus the movies looked better in the dark, so I figured I'd run with it.

For the record, I was surprisingly sharp for an overnight shift. I made all sorts of progress and all of my tests were passing. It was turning out to be a banner night. At 4am, "Van Wilder" goes on. It's made by the same people who did "Animal House" and it sure has that same look and feel. It even has the guy who played Otter from "Animal House" as the father of the guy who's the lead character in this one. From start to finish, it's an outstanding movie. Between that and the Jolt bubble-gum, I'm able to make it to 6am, when the next crew arrives to take over.

So I guess I made it through the night. By 8am, the lack of sleep hit me like a ton of bricks. I was out of it. However, I still ended up sticking around till about noon to get some other stuff done. Groggily, I drove home, stopping once to vote in the local primary. That's always fun... good thing I had enough faculties to remember what I was there for. It's an an old-age home too.. I might have very well asked for a room to crash in.

Thankfully, I finished everything on Tuesday morning and didn't have to play out the rest of the midnight to 6 shifts. But man, between the movies and the hallucinations that was that one rockin' time!

Grandma's refrigerator and Schrodinger's cat

Here's a story for you about the kinds of things you have to deal with when helping clean out your grandmother's refrigerator. This may or may not hit home for some of you out there.

One weekend, my wife and I volunteered our weekend to go and watch over my grandmother so that my parents could get away on a guilt-free no-strings-attached vacation. As she is 92 years old (I think.. I can never remember) and has a hard time getting around her in-law apartment, my parents are concerned for her well-being whenever they leave her alone. So, as a service, we offer to come down and spend time with her, eat some meals with her, and help her out with any tasks that need to be completed.

One such task was the cleaning out of her refrigerator and freezer. That one fell to me. Although I suppose I shouldn't complain... my wife cleaned the bathroom, which was probably just as disgusting, but not nearly as funny as my task.

Now if you've ever poked around the refrigerator of somebody who was born around that time period, it's an eye-opening experience. They never throw anything out. I know that the depression-era mentality dictates you don't waste any food, but some of that post-dated stuff can kill you if you try it. Or at least grow legs and escape out of the fridge when you open the door.

To give you an idea of what I was dealing with, I found about 12 containers of sour cream. That's right 12. Many different brands and many different versions (plain, lite, etc), all with one thing in common: they were all well overdue... by at least 6 months.

Now, when I see something like that in my fridge, it goes right in the trash. What my grandmother does is open it up, taste it, and decide if it's still good or not. Ugh. So yeah, she was sampling year old sour cream, amongst other things. Much to my chagrin.

The winner of the "oldest item in the refrigerator" sweepstakes was a crock of butter from the month when I started college... 10 bleepin' years ago! So of course she takes it from me, opens it up to reveal the giant fissure which has worked it's way across and down through the hardened butter, swipes her finger across the top, tastes it, and says "That's still good!" Unbelievable.

My favorite policy was by far the theory of "if it's never been opened, it's still good". Like many of the sour cream containers which I begrudgingly put back in the fridge after she opened up the lid and saw that the foil cover was still securely in place. I later referred to this theory as the culinary equivalent of "Schrodinger's cat". You see, the theory was that if you locked a cat in a solid lead box with an ampule of cyanide, there was no way to determine if the cat was alive or dead inside without opening it. It was a paradox that stated that at that moment, before the box is opened and the answer is revealed, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Apparently, the same goes for sour cream. Because we refused to peel back the foil cover, the sour cream is allowed to be both good and moldy and disgusting at the same time.

So I determined that if I was going to really help my grandmother, I would have to do it on the QT. So when she was busy examining the contents of one container, I would stealthily be tossing stuff out with the other hand. I got caught a couple of times, at which point I had to convince her that I was 're-throwing out' stuff that I already had tossed in, thus staying one step ahead of my elderly grandmother... I'm so going to hell.

Well, by the time we got to working on the freezer, Cindy finished up in the bathroom. Now I had some help. Because what we saw in the freezer were boxes for frozen dinners that had the look and feel of boxes that were manufactured in the 1970s...early 1980s at the most conservative estimate. Cindy even exclaimed at one point, "I remember seeing that packaging around in the 70s!" Undaunted, grandma wanted to keep them. So we went to plan B:

"Look over there!"

Cindy would distract grandma by getting her to look off in some other direction while I would grab a handful of frozen items and toss them right in the garbage bag. There was no getting caught this time. Not with my fantastic accomplice by my side. Everything must go! Including stuff in that freezer that we could neither identify as being meat or bread. And 8 years worth of Thanksgiving turkey gizzards. Ahh, good times.

So anyways, thanks to our effort, my grandmother now has one fantastically clean fridge and freezer. And some sour cream that may not kill her.

The one about 2% and the NBA Jam challenge

Well, I have my first formal request. Hell, I was just happy to receive my first comment. Big days are ahead, I can feel it. Plus I have this cool counter now so I can see who's visiting my site. And to whoever from Northwestern University (or its server) is checking back often on the site, thanks for stopping by! And I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, but I've been busy as hell with work and the like. I really just need to punch out a whole bunch of these in one sitting when I'm not busy and then just dole them out over time. That would probably be for the best.

So anyways, this is a short story about a fella who hails by the name of "2%". Well truthfully, he didn't call himself that, my friend Marc and I did. But he damn well planted the seed when he made the mistake of telling us that he was only made up of 2% body fat. You see, that only flies when you look like you're made up of 2% body fat. Me, I'm more like 20%, but that's neither here nor there. At least I never went around touting it. This guy... we had no idea where he was coming from. To give you an idea of what this guy looked like, the other nickname that Marc came up with for him was "fireplug".

Anyways, it was another boring night in the dorms, so Marc and I decided to fire up NBA Jam in my room. If you don't remember this game, it's the one where your players run around with either big heads or big feet and simply cannot miss a shot. You could play 2 minute quarters and still score about 150 points. And then when you made 3 shots in row, the ball would catch fire, and then you most certainly wouldn't miss. So, Marc and I would usually team up and absolutely abuse the game console in a game of 2-on-2, even with it set on the most difficult setting.

So we were good. Real good.

And then "2%" stopped by. And made the mistake of challenging our awesomeness. By himself. Now, I really didn't know this guy. I think he lived in our dorm somewhere, but I don't remember. But I'm hospitable, and I invite him in. Because I love video games, I had a four-player tap hooked up to my Sega Genesis, so we could have all sorts of folks over to step right up and test their NBA Jam aptitude.

Minutes into the "contest", it's clear that he is no match for Marc and I. Which is okay.... I never expected anything different. Then he accuses us of cheating. You see, NBA Jam has cheat codes that give your players the ability to do ridiculous things, like make shots from under your own basket or dunk from half court. We were actually being nice. We hadn't been using the cheat codes. So he challenges us again. Big mistake.. nobody accuses us of cheating and gets away with it.

This time, without speaking, we both secretly enable the cheat codes. Now it's a bloodbath. Now it's funny.

To add to it, Marc starts taunting him.

"What's up 2%?"

"How ya like that 2%?"

"What's up fireplug?"

Now tears are streaming down my face. We're obliterating him and now we've moved on to trash talking. I can't do it though. I can't even talk. After the game is over, he drops the controller down and storms out.

I don't think we ever saw him again. At least I didn't.

Shane's never seen this number before

I'm inspired. My friend Marc has this fantastic blog where he has been telling some pretty amazing but true stories.

So I was remembering something funny that happened to me. Well, to my wife and I... on our honeymoon.

We had decided to go to New Orleans as that would be a fun atmosphere to celebrate our nuptuals. And it was a blast too, as we got to experience everything the French Quarter had to offer between Hurricanes and Pat O'Brien's, beignets at Cafe du Monde, and alligator sausage at the various diners around town. Basically, a lot of it revolved around all of the cool food they had down there that you can't necessarily get up here.

We even had an experience where we went to Brennan's which is a famous place to catch brunch, because a guy sitting next to us on the plane told us that it was a "reasonably priced" and "low key" place to do so. So we wandered in there in our very tourist-y looking t-shirt and shorts, only to get looked up and down by the maitre-d, and get sat somewhere where absolutely nobody else could see us. You wouldn't think that they would be able to fit a table for two behind the cash register, now would you? Looking around the restaurant, we see that all of hte men are wearing suits and all of the women are wearing nice dresses. We opened our menus to find that the brunch buffet was "reasonably priced" at $35 a person. We were stunned. And then our waiter asked us what cocktail we would like with our brunch.

"Maybe a raspberry mimosa?"

"How about a sloe gin fizz?"

With breakfast? Are you kidding me? Well, at least I wasn't used to it. So, we aptly decided that this was not the place for us. I mean, it could have been... under different circumstances... like if we hadn't been lied to by the guy on the plane and severly underdressed ourselves.

So our honeymoon was really pretty good. But there was this one funny moment I'll never forget when we're walking around the French Quarter and this kid approaches us and asks us if we want free tickets to the aquarium or any other of the attractions in town. Also, there was a coupon book good for all of the local restaurants included in this package. Since we had only been in town one day and still had the rest of the week ahead of us, we were interested. But this alarming feeling went off in us when he followed up his offer with "follow me". This was New Orleans, after all.

We follow the kid for about a block, with me trying to make a mental note of all the streets we turned on so that if we needed to run away in a pinch, we could do it. We enter into this building and are told to take a seat. Almost immediately, the woman behind the counter asks us to show her proof of credit. She makes it clear that we don't need to present it to her, but we just need to hold up a credit card to prove that we can afford whatever (and we still don't know yet) is behind Door #1.

Passing the "proof of credit" test, we then move on to filling out this information sheet. Now we're really starting to get concerned. Making the right call, Cindy decides to give us fake names and a fake address. Way to go Cindy! So for the rest of this "visit", I am to now be known as "Bob" and Cindy is to be known as "Jean". And we were from Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. For the record, this is actually another married couple that we know, so it would in theory be easy for us to remember that these two names go together. Of course, that was the theory.

So we start our tour of what now appears to be a time-share in the middle of the Quarter, and we meet our new friend and tour guide Shane. We're not 5 minutes into the tour when Cindy slips up and calls me by my real name. When I get her within my own personal earshot, I grit my teeth and say to her "My name is not Mike!" She looks to see if Shane caught it. Nope, so far so good. I, for my part, did a pretty darn good job of getting her name right for the entirety of the tour.

And the place was fabulous too. Very elegant, very exciting, very unaffordable. As we will soon find out. Once the tour is over, we get lead into the "pit". This is where other couples, such as ourselves, are sitting around tables with their tour guides and talking numbers. I call it the "pit" because you just got the sense that there was a whole lot of wheeling and dealing going on and that we were going to be in way over our heads. Nothing to worry about though, as our game plan of "just hold strong and say no" was still intact.

So we get sat at this table, and Shane starts talking numbers. We give him the cold, hard truth. We are on our honeymoon and as we have just gotten married, we do not have the requisite funds it would take to afford 2 weeks at this lovely establishment. But, to his credit, he keeps working us and working us.

No go.

I think we had finally turned down an offer of $13K, before he excused himself and went over and got "the closer".

You all know who the closer is. You've seen him whenever you've gone to buy a new or used car. He's the guy who comes in and gives you the uber-hard sell after the last guy just gave you the seriously-hard sell. Well, he comes over and what-do-you-know? Somebody just gave up their time-share. He's looking to unload it in a hurry. As a result, he's got an even lower price that he's going to pitch to us. Divine Providence has smiled down upon us this day!

But here's my favorite part and also the title-plot connection. Instead of just telling us what it's going to cost us, he writes it down on a piece of paper and slides it across the table. As he's doing this he says, "Now, Shane has never seen this number before! This is special deal for you, right now!". Of course at this point I'm thinking he just saw this number like 15 minutes ago when he gave his last tour. Either that or he's got a short-term memory problem that he needs to get fixed. To add to the effect, Shane lets out an audible "whoa!" while making this fantastic look of amazement. Priceless, just priceless.

They finally cave after God-knows-how-many excruciating minutes and we're free to go with our coupon book and our tickets to the aquarium. We had a great rest of our vacation using the coupons at the local restaurants and also getting to see the famous albino aligator at the aquarium. But when it came to pure comedy, nothing beat our trip to the time-share. We'll still to this day point to signs with numbering on it and say "I wonder if Shane's ever seen that number before!" Poor Shane.

I keep having this recurring nightmare

There's 1 out in the bottom of the 8th inning of game 7 of the ALCS... the Red Sox are winning 5 to 2. The bleepin' New York Yankees are starting to string together a rally against Pedro Martinez. Runners are on first and third. Grady Little comes out of the dugout to apparently pull Pedro from the game. Since there is surely a commercial break on the horizon, I get up and go to the kitchen to get myself another beer. When I come back out, lo and behold the game is still on. I am beside myself. What happened? Why didn't he pull Pedro? This is when things get hazy and I black out. Somewhere in there some items got thrown and I power-vomited. It wasn't pretty.

What's worse is that it wasn't a nightmare. It really happened. I remember my friend Brian ticking off the outs one at a time on a napkin and telling him that it wasn't a good idea. You see, he was new to being a Red Sox fan and had not been subjected to the abject pain that the rest of us have been forced to endure. As a matter of fact, when the game was over, he calmly said "Aren't you happy about how well they did this year?". The rest of us just sneered at him. I think from a baseball standpoint we've poisoned him forever now. Innocence lost.

Is it wrong that 10 months later this still vexes me? I swear, sometimes when I'm in the car, say I'm driving to work or something, I get a sudden case of Tourette's syndrome thinking about that sequence of events from October. I still wanna yell out "Pull him Grady! Take him out!" and put my fist through the dashboard, but to no avail. I mean, what was he thinking? That Red Sox bullpen was automatic in the playoffs. You couldn't score a run off of them. So in the biggest game of the season with a trip to the World Series on the line, he decides to save Mike Timlin for what? Game 1 of the World Series? Ended up saving him for spring training instead. Ugh. And the thing is, it's almost playoff time for the season we're currently in, and I'm still upset about it.

But of course, this is the road we Red Sox fans are forced to hoe. They say that women live an average of 7 years longer than men. Well, I've got to imagine that Yankees fans live an average of 7 years longer than Red Sox fans. With all the stress we have to deal with, how can it not be so? They lead a pretty privileged existence while we have to figure out when the guillotine is going to drop. Because games like those do add up over time. I'm at least grateful that I was 10 years old and was sound asleep well before Buckner booted that one in '86.

Another statistic I've heard is that for every cigarette that one smokes, 7 minutes is taken off of that person's lifespan. And that doesn't even include the 7 or so minutes spent smoking it in the first place. So, in other words, I can't get those 3-plus hours back that I spent watching the game, and on top of that I've also got to deal with the loss of about a year of my life due to the resulting trauma. That game gave me dry heaves. I'm not kidding. The combination of beer, fried snacks, and the big sinking feeling had me on the bathroom floor making a call on the porcelain telephone.

My wife thinks I'm a big wierdo because of that. She kept asking what the hell was the matter with me. Of course, as a lifelong Sox fan herself, she was devastated too. We banded together though and decided the best course of action was to go out and get a puppy to cheer us up... a miniature female dachshund that we named "Fenway" Frankie. Isn't that sick? I need help.

But hey, whatever it takes to cope right?

Damn, stupid Grady Little. When will the torment end?