Post by Jim H. on Apr 7, 2024 22:41:19 GMT -5
We were in Starbucks during the earthquake. “Mommy, am I going to die?” we heard a child say who was either afraid of the earthquake or having an existential crisis at the exact same time. Our first impulse was to flee in terror out the door. But we hadn’t yet got the oat milk foam for our coffee. Perhaps this was just an excuse for us not to be the first ones to flee in terror out the door. So we waited until six others had fled and then we followed them, without our oat milk foam, but retaining a tiny shred of self-respect.
Earthquakes and eclipses. Events like this usually presage momentous happenings like battles or the toppling of kings. In today’s world sports will suffice for either, and so we point to the prospect of a Toronto-born hockey player, Zach Edey, guiding Purdue to the national championship in basketball Monday night. That’s worthy of an eclipse, slated for Indianapolis Monday afternoon around 3 p.m. No wonder people are flying from all over the world to see it. It reminds us of that old lyric from Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” song released in November of 1972 and topping the charts at the beginning of 1973:
Then you flew your Lear Jet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun
That was an actual historical event occurring July 10, 1972. We texted Paul Egan Sunday morning to see if he remembered it and this was his response:
Of course! It was so well publicized that many famous people from all over the world converged on NS to take in the event—at the time the best place in the world to view it.
I watched it in my back yard—probably to the naked eye, and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I was nine.
Come to think of it, my vision hasn’t been the same since…
Incidentally, Paul is having a great time skiing. He’s been to Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin, Vail, Beaver Creek and Copper Mountain. We think that’s wonderful. Unlike Eddie, we don’t begrudge Paul his extravagant, jet setting lifestyle, or the fact that the next generation is going to have to pay for it. And we imagine he’s very proud of his countryman, Zach Edey and Zach’s success at Purdue. Coincidentally, we were visiting Purdue earlier in the week and experienced Boilermaker pride firsthand. We can attest that there’s not a single door on campus that Zach Edey can go through without ducking. After our guided tour, we self-guided ourselves over to the rec center because according to our standards, if a school has a vibrant pickup basketball culture it is a good school. At 4 p.m. we found six full-court games in progress on two levels of the building. Thus, basketball is to Indiana what hockey is to Canada. We questioned a 40-something player waiting to take on winners and he told us how he had graduated from Purdue in 2001 and is back to get a graduate degree in philosophy. We talked a little Spinoza and Aristotle and then he explained how the games are to 15 with one and two-point baskets, except if older players play—professors and the like whom he claimed can still drain a bucket if you leave them open—in which case games are to 11 and every basket counts as one. He summed up how desperately Purdue wants a national championship. They’ve never won before. And last year lost to the 16th seed Fairleigh Dickinson in the first round. And a little child shall lead them so the saying goes. Or one big Canadian named Zach Edey.
The first tint of green in the trees. The first smell of cut grass. That’s Week 28 in a nutshell. Pretty soon it will be “Bring on summer!” and “Happy golfing Old Bucks Nation!” In the meantime there were three games left to play and Red was enjoying a ten-game winning streak. That’s a gross distortion of Old Bucks parity. Some thought Red should just gracefully lose Week 28 the way Cal Ripken sat out a game to end his own streak. But that’s not Red’s nature. Nor was it pleased to find in its in-box Sunday morning the following message:
We regret to inform you that Andrew Cordssen-David will not be skating Red tonight. He has a prior engagement.
Only when Brian posted the teams Sunday afternoon did Red find out that prior engagement was skating for Blue! Red’s chances were, at best, even with its offense led by Bob Freiling and his not-ready-for-enhanced-living players. We got to the locker room super early, fearing we’d miss puck drop and the first line brawl in Old Bucks history with the Tonas tussling with Joe Bruno, Mark Mayer dispensing uppercuts and haymakers on the bulbous-helmeted Rich Cerbone, and Ed Conrad, like Shesterkin, going around and picking up equipment. Arriving in locker room 4 we used, for the first time, the goalie tracking app to confirm that Ed was in locker room 3 and Chetti was just leaving his driveway. This gave Aaron Kibbey a chance to tell a funny Chetti story from his days playing with Gillian at Lawrence High. There was a penalty shot that Chetti stopped with his pads. The player acknowledged it was no goal and skated back to his bench. In the meantime Chetti couldn’t find the puck. It was lodged somewhere in his pads. He shook his arms and patted down his pants, whereupon the puck dropped to the ice and rolled into the goal. And the referee signaled goal! Suffice to say Chetti and Lawrence High were not very happy with the call.
The game itself was on a whole different plane—a 16-16 tie that Red would have surely won if Blue hadn’t gone into Cordssen-David Overdrive in the closing seconds. Both teams were hoping for a couple of bonus minutes to play “next goal wins” but Bruce the Zamboni driver was standing at the big bi-fold doors with a remote control in his hand, sounding the buzzer the moment the clock struck 7:30. The fact that the scoreboard read 17-16 Red was the cause of much confusion in the locker room after the game, and we had to invoke our little scratch pad as infallible proof that the score was indeed tied. Sixteen people christened the new freshly painted porch at TJ’s with the smell of latex mingling with the aroma of pizza and asphyxiants spewed from passing cars. Bob Freiling jokingly insisted that Red won the game 17-16. At least it was jokingly at first, and then after insisting about five more times we realized his kidding was a bit forced and he was actually deeply deeply wounded that Red hadn’t won the game. In response we’ll paraphrase that Dave Mason song from 1977 “We Just Disagree” which still holds up well after so many decades:
So let's leave it alone, 'cause we can't see eye to eye
There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy
There's only Blue and Red and we just disagree
Ooh-hoo-hoo, oh-oh-ho
Earthquakes and eclipses. Events like this usually presage momentous happenings like battles or the toppling of kings. In today’s world sports will suffice for either, and so we point to the prospect of a Toronto-born hockey player, Zach Edey, guiding Purdue to the national championship in basketball Monday night. That’s worthy of an eclipse, slated for Indianapolis Monday afternoon around 3 p.m. No wonder people are flying from all over the world to see it. It reminds us of that old lyric from Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” song released in November of 1972 and topping the charts at the beginning of 1973:
Then you flew your Lear Jet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun
That was an actual historical event occurring July 10, 1972. We texted Paul Egan Sunday morning to see if he remembered it and this was his response:
Of course! It was so well publicized that many famous people from all over the world converged on NS to take in the event—at the time the best place in the world to view it.
I watched it in my back yard—probably to the naked eye, and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I was nine.
Come to think of it, my vision hasn’t been the same since…
Incidentally, Paul is having a great time skiing. He’s been to Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin, Vail, Beaver Creek and Copper Mountain. We think that’s wonderful. Unlike Eddie, we don’t begrudge Paul his extravagant, jet setting lifestyle, or the fact that the next generation is going to have to pay for it. And we imagine he’s very proud of his countryman, Zach Edey and Zach’s success at Purdue. Coincidentally, we were visiting Purdue earlier in the week and experienced Boilermaker pride firsthand. We can attest that there’s not a single door on campus that Zach Edey can go through without ducking. After our guided tour, we self-guided ourselves over to the rec center because according to our standards, if a school has a vibrant pickup basketball culture it is a good school. At 4 p.m. we found six full-court games in progress on two levels of the building. Thus, basketball is to Indiana what hockey is to Canada. We questioned a 40-something player waiting to take on winners and he told us how he had graduated from Purdue in 2001 and is back to get a graduate degree in philosophy. We talked a little Spinoza and Aristotle and then he explained how the games are to 15 with one and two-point baskets, except if older players play—professors and the like whom he claimed can still drain a bucket if you leave them open—in which case games are to 11 and every basket counts as one. He summed up how desperately Purdue wants a national championship. They’ve never won before. And last year lost to the 16th seed Fairleigh Dickinson in the first round. And a little child shall lead them so the saying goes. Or one big Canadian named Zach Edey.
The first tint of green in the trees. The first smell of cut grass. That’s Week 28 in a nutshell. Pretty soon it will be “Bring on summer!” and “Happy golfing Old Bucks Nation!” In the meantime there were three games left to play and Red was enjoying a ten-game winning streak. That’s a gross distortion of Old Bucks parity. Some thought Red should just gracefully lose Week 28 the way Cal Ripken sat out a game to end his own streak. But that’s not Red’s nature. Nor was it pleased to find in its in-box Sunday morning the following message:
We regret to inform you that Andrew Cordssen-David will not be skating Red tonight. He has a prior engagement.
Only when Brian posted the teams Sunday afternoon did Red find out that prior engagement was skating for Blue! Red’s chances were, at best, even with its offense led by Bob Freiling and his not-ready-for-enhanced-living players. We got to the locker room super early, fearing we’d miss puck drop and the first line brawl in Old Bucks history with the Tonas tussling with Joe Bruno, Mark Mayer dispensing uppercuts and haymakers on the bulbous-helmeted Rich Cerbone, and Ed Conrad, like Shesterkin, going around and picking up equipment. Arriving in locker room 4 we used, for the first time, the goalie tracking app to confirm that Ed was in locker room 3 and Chetti was just leaving his driveway. This gave Aaron Kibbey a chance to tell a funny Chetti story from his days playing with Gillian at Lawrence High. There was a penalty shot that Chetti stopped with his pads. The player acknowledged it was no goal and skated back to his bench. In the meantime Chetti couldn’t find the puck. It was lodged somewhere in his pads. He shook his arms and patted down his pants, whereupon the puck dropped to the ice and rolled into the goal. And the referee signaled goal! Suffice to say Chetti and Lawrence High were not very happy with the call.
The game itself was on a whole different plane—a 16-16 tie that Red would have surely won if Blue hadn’t gone into Cordssen-David Overdrive in the closing seconds. Both teams were hoping for a couple of bonus minutes to play “next goal wins” but Bruce the Zamboni driver was standing at the big bi-fold doors with a remote control in his hand, sounding the buzzer the moment the clock struck 7:30. The fact that the scoreboard read 17-16 Red was the cause of much confusion in the locker room after the game, and we had to invoke our little scratch pad as infallible proof that the score was indeed tied. Sixteen people christened the new freshly painted porch at TJ’s with the smell of latex mingling with the aroma of pizza and asphyxiants spewed from passing cars. Bob Freiling jokingly insisted that Red won the game 17-16. At least it was jokingly at first, and then after insisting about five more times we realized his kidding was a bit forced and he was actually deeply deeply wounded that Red hadn’t won the game. In response we’ll paraphrase that Dave Mason song from 1977 “We Just Disagree” which still holds up well after so many decades:
So let's leave it alone, 'cause we can't see eye to eye
There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy
There's only Blue and Red and we just disagree
Ooh-hoo-hoo, oh-oh-ho