No Clever Title

See, the joy of having a perfect attendance record in one class, and only missing one session of the other means that if I don’t go to either of my classes tomorrow, no one is going to say “That damn David Robbins kid! Gar!”

I’ve been debating for about the last 2 hours whether or not I was actually going to get up at 9 a.m. tomorrow to go talk about Antony and Cleopatra. Answer: No.

I’ve only written 75 words and my eyes are already noticeably starting to droop. This is either going to be a very short post, or a very long one that makes less and less sense as it goes. But, I have a few stories, so here goes.

We had a party at Robbie’s house the Thursday before our away 2 away games against Windsor. (Robbie is the team captain.) It was suppose to be a “watching a baseball game from last season” meeting where we’d discuss strategy and drink beer except… we removed the strategy and in its place drank more beer… who saw THAT coming?

We had a blast. Robbie, a diehard Marlins fan decided to put on one of their games. (MLB.tv allows subscribers to watch every game from last year during the off and pre season.) He picked a game against the Mets, however, the first hour of this game was a rain delay. Though we were able to fast-forward, this resulted in about 5 minutes of fast-forward and vicious, bloodthirsty ridicule.

Since the replay included the rain-delay, it also included the commercials. The running commentary of American advertisements coming from British kids was the best part of the game. (I mean, it was the Marlins… and I already knew the score. Who cares how great Dan Uggla’s swing is. His last name is Uggla for a reason!)

I don’t carry a notebook with me on a regular basis. I take notes in my cell phone. If someone says something good and you whip out a notebook, it draws attention. Pull out your cell phone and start texting away, no one bats an eye. Save it to drafts, they’ll never know you’re listening like a journalist. All of these are quotes I wrote down during the evening.

During an SUV commercial: “You’ll never need a car this big. But you want one, because it looks fucking awesome!”

During a Pizza Hut commercial: “But a ridiculous amount of pizza, get a ridiculous amount of pizza free!”

Someone decided we should play a baseball related drinking game at one point. We toss around a lot of lame ideas and then for the 900^th time, a preview for some inspirational baseball movie called “The Final Season” is played. During this preview, Paul announces, “Guys, I’ve got it. We’ll watch The Final Season, and every time a father has an inspirational talk with his son whom he has become estranged from, and baseball is the thing that brings them together, everyone takes a drink!”

After the game ended we started flipping between channels on TV. We skip over some bizarre looking sport and I ask, “What is that?”

“That’s netball. Don’t the have netball in the states?”

“No.”

“Oh. It’s a lot like basketball except everyone is on ice skates… and they’re all blind folded.”

Everyone enjoys picking on the American.

The UEA Blue Sox won the first game on Saturday 14-6. In the second game we were losing 6-3 in the 4^th inning. The other team was at bat. With no outs, the bases were loaded, and it was pouring. The Blue Sox decided to cut their losses and call it a 6-3 loss instead of submit to the inevitable beating they were about to take.

I spent the weekend hunkered down in my room writing 2 essays, planning my Easter vacation, and making some moves in Fantasy Baseball. Some genius in my league dropped Paul Konerko to pick up Curt Schilling the day after the Red Sox made it very clear that Schillings career was over. Way to go, team stupid!

I’ve put in a waiver request to acquire Konerko.

Schilling being done means that drafting Clay Buchholz was a really good move. Today, Redsox.com referred to Jon Lester as the Ace for the 2008 season, as Josh Beckett is already struggling with a back injury.

After seeing his new title as the Ace of 2008, I checked to see if he was available, and he was. I have since dropped Mark Buehrle to make room for Lester from free agency. Even if Buehrle were to have a season better than any he’s ever had before, that’d put him at 16 wins. 16 wins is on the good end of mediocre. Boston would not be calling Jon Lester their new ace in March if they thought he was going to even be in the ballpark of mediocre. Passing up the opportunity to pick up this platinum prospect would be something I’d really regret later in the season if he performs even half as well as he should. Plus, if he doesn’t, there’s plenty of old duds like Buehrle sitting in the lukewarm pool of free agency.

I realize that this gives me 6 Red Sox players on my team, which goes slightly against my “I’m not letting my bias get in the way…” but they won the World Series! This is slightly different than a Royals fan having 5 Royals just because they like the good old blue and gold!

I’ve got Mike Lowell who kicked ass last year and is not showing signs of slowing down. I’ve got both of Boston’s center fielders, Crisp and Ellsbury. I’m waiting to see who they say will be their #1, at which point I will re-assess having both of them on my team. I’ve got Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester, and lastly, Jonathon Papelbon.

I’ve got a lot of prospects, possibly picking up Konerko, and I have 5 knock out relievers, 3 of whom I’m willing to trade. I think it’s fair to say this is going to be a good year for The Damn Bandits fantasy baseball.

I’ll keep the Weekly Brit updated on the trades, but for some reason, Fox Fantasy Baseball has trades disabled right now. I emailed them to complain and they responded saying it was a technical error that they were working to fix. I’ve never seen a technical error take a freaking week to fix, but then again it is Fox.

Fox is probably too busy doing voodoo magic on Barack Obama and having their sweatshop laborers turn enough of a profit to pay for Eliot Splitzer’s overdue balance. (The pictures from that story are heartbreaking. His poor wife! Poor thing should have made that asshole go apologize to the nation alone. She looks like she needs a hug.)

That wraps it up for this post. I will put up my full travel details of where I’ll be and when before I leave, but this might be my last post for a while. I will have my laptop for the first 10 days in London but I’m not bringing it with me after I head to Edinburgh on the 24^th.