Week 11: The Big O

Last Saturday, I took a train to Philly. I had deliberately taken an early afternoon one so it wouldn’t be crowded. And it paid off. Not only did I get a pair of seats to myself, but I got one of the choice rows at the front of a car, with no seats in front of it, so that I could stretch my legs out for the duration of the trip. As the train lurched into motion, everything was going perfectly, until, with a pneumatic hiss, a middle-aged Asian man in a suit came breathlessly into my car, looking very confused.

He leaned his rollerbag against the wall of the car, looked at me, and kind of grunted at it. I nodded my assent for him to leave it there. He smiled and promptly sat down next to me.

I looked behind me at the sea of empty rows. I did it a second time, with an even more exaggerated turn of my neck, as if rehearsing for “Exorcist: The Musical.” He was staring at his ticket, and my neck was starting to hurt. Slumping back into my seat, I screwed my ear buds in tightly and closed my eyes. The rhythmic rolling of the train would normally have lulled me to sleep, but my companion’s proximity was unnerving. I opened one eye a slit and saw him still staring intensely at his ticket.

He leaned in close to my face and jabbed at his ticket. “This seat?”

I gave up the charade and sat up. “It’s open seating. As long as you have a ticket, you can sit anywhere.”

He looked back at his ticket.

“Which is my seat?”

“Any. Dude, you’re fine.”

He sat pensively, processing this information. I could almost see the gears turning in his brain as he decided I was full of shit.

I pulled a rolled-up Entertainment Weekly out of my bag, and was halfway through the demise of Matt LeBlanc’s career when he started up again.

“Train – go very fast?”

I was starting to feel as though I had stumbled across a really easy crossword puzzle in the back of a magazine. He was making me feel smart. “Yeah. We’ll be in Philadelphia in about two hours.”

Silence.

“What about bus?”

And I’m thinking, dude, were you cryogenically frozen before the industrial age? In what time period is a bus ever faster than a train?

“It’s going to be slower than the train.”

“How long is bus?”

“About three hours.”

He seemed oddly disquieted by the answer. I began to wonder whether he was in a race around the world.

I went back to reading about this year’s Oscar hopefuls, but was secretly hoping he’d throw me another softball. I think some part of me believed there would be a prize at the end. Instead, about twenty minutes into our journey together, he figured out how to walk into the next car, and took his luggage and his leave.

On the plus side, I got my seat back.

Onto the game.

Most bi-curious comment by John Madden: “. . .and when the Chargers put on those powder blue uniforms, oh! That’s it!”

Like Wile E. Coyote, who keeps running without realizing that the cliff has ended, the St. Louis Rams rocketed out of this season with a 4-1 record before remembering, “Hey, we actually suck,” and plummeting straight into the canyon, losing their next four. To salvage their playoff hopes, they needed a fast reversal of fortunes. Unfortunately for them, their next stop was Bank of America Stadium, home of the Tar Heel Terror Squad, America’s Team, your CAROLINA PANTHERS!

And the Big Cat D was sack-tacular! QB Marc Bulger was sacked five times in the first half. Not to be outdone, the Rams defense did its part to get off the field as quickly as possible. Against WR Steve Smith, hands-down the best receiver in all of football, the Rams matched up. . .rookie Tye Hill. In single coverage.

(No team in the past two seasons has been able to stop Steve Smith with single coverage. Not one. The Rams coaching staff, relying largely upon game footage found on YouTube, appears to have missed that.)

69-yd catch by Smith to end the second half! Touchdown, Steve Smith! Panthers up 10-0!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the playsheet, the Panthers re-established the running game. The tandem of DeShaun Foster and DeAngelo “Brown Sugar” Williams left the Rams D DeStroyed, DeBilitated, and DeFeated, rushing for 244 yards!

(My new favorite asinine observation from football commentators, after a dropped pass: “You have to catch that ball.” As though the receiver had mulled his options during the milliseconds prior and made the wrong choice. I would love to see a commentator make the complementary point, for example, when a receiver makes a catch up by two touchdowns with fewer than two minutes to play. “Nice grab, but really no need to catch that one.”)

The Rams were never in it, their twelve possessions resulting in 9 punts, 1 interception, 3 french hens, 1 fumble, and 1 safety. Shut out! Shut out! Panthers blank the Rams, 15-0!

Next week: The Panthers visit a fading Redskins team starting Jason Campbell at QB. Idiotic Boomer Esiason comment on the Cowboys’ loss to the Redskins a few weeks ago, on Parcells’ call to go for two after a first-half TD. “It was a stupid call. Romo’s completion rate on two-point conversions is just a little over 50 percent, you have to go for the field goal.” Umm, actually Boomer, mathematically speaking, if your conversion rate is anything over 50%, it always makes sense to go for two (unless you’re on the final drive of the game, down by 7). Assuming you’re one of those morons who’s always trying to score more points than the other team.

Prediction: Panthers 59, Redskins 17

Until next time.

RROWRRRRRRRR!

Week 10: Happy Feet

In a brilliant business ploy, Sony has decided to heighten demand for its Playstation 3 by not actually selling any before Christmas.

"Given the hundreds of people who camped out for the chance to buy one of ten that were delivered to their neighborhood Circuit City, it was a no-brainer to take it to the next level and not ship any at all," explained an unidentified Sony spokesperson, a recent Harvard MBA grad. "What we lose in revenue we more than make up for in viral marketing."

Experts agree.

"It makes perfect sense," commented a self-described hardcore gamer, emailing from his apartment which hasn’t seen a woman enter under her own volition in more than a decade. "Think about how many more customers they get with this kind of buzz. Well, theoretical customers."

Indeed, for the past few weeks, gaming message boards have experienced round-the-clock discussions of the PS3, with the most popular threads being: "Where Can I Get A PS3," "This Is What I Imagine Playing a PS3 Is Like," "How Do I Turn Off the Feature Where It Catches on Fire?," and "Looking For Sex."

Meanwhile, Harvard MBA grads at Nintendo, Inc. intend to capitalize on deferred expectations this weekend by launching what may be the lamest gaming system ever. The Nintendo Wii claims to heighten the gaming experience with a controller that incorporates the player’s hand gestures, thus allowing players to wield a sword onscreen or fend off a wedgie. Nintendo expects brisk sales of its first release, “Eatin’ Cheetos!,” and has offered to bus interested purchasers in unmarked vans to local retailers. Nintendo has guaranteed it will never release the identities of Wii purchasers. Ever.

- - -

First, college: it’s the showdown people have been talking about all season. The two top teams in the country. A championship on the line. A rivalry more than a century old. This Saturday, the nation will be watching Boston, as 7-2 Yale meets 7-2 Harvard in the 123^rd edition of The Game! A win by Yale guarantees a piece of the Ivy League title, and a loss by Princeton gives them the title outright! Boola boola! Boola boola! Go Elis!

Onto the game. . .

After a disastrous fourth-quarter collapse to Dallas, our heroes entered the by-week at 4-4, one loss more than my comfort level, two more than their internal goal. Expectations were high that this season would be a tale of two halves, and that America’s Team, the Growling Wall, your CAROLINA PANTHERS would return to form and storm through to the Super Bowl!

After watching the Big Cat D turn their starting quarterback into an involuntary organ donor earlier this season, you knew that the Bucs offense was going to make this personal. And they did. In the first half, B. Gradkowski personally threw two interceptions, victimized at will by the Felonious Felines featuring a healthy CB Ken Lucas!

But the Cats seemed unable to capitalize on their auspicious defense, scoring less than Kelly in Cancun. They headed into the locker room down 7-0.

It was, as they say, a tale of two halves. And in the first half, the Panthers did not “have” a running game. But in the second half, they did “have” WR Steve Smith.

A 43-yard catch by Smith in the first drive after the half put the Panthers in field goal range! 3-7, Panthers! A fumble recovery by sack-tastic DE Julius Peppers on the Bucs first drive led to a WR Keyshawn Johnson touchdown! 10-7, Panthers! MVP-front runner Peppers would finish the game with three sacks and a fumble. Meanwhile, the Panthers’ run defense was tighter than a Senate page’s bunghole, limiting RB Cadillac Williams to 15 carries for 44 yards.

Smith, having caught the flu from his daughter, spent most of his time between plays throwing up in a trash can on the sideline. But you can’t stop the Pocket Dynamo, you can only hope to dehydrate him! Eight receptions for 149 yards, including the game-clinching touchdown! (And for every Randy Moss who collects a six-figure paycheck and doesn’t even care about the game, you have to love Smith’s post-game explanation for why he continued playing: “This is how I feed my family.”) 24-10, Panthers win! Panthers win!

Next week: The city of St. Louis, still celebrating the lowest-rated World Series in decades, sends the personality-challenged Marc Bulger and the Rams to Bank of America Stadium.

Prediction: Panthers 38, St. Louis 4

Until next time.

RROWRRRRRRRR!

Week 9: Bye

Week 8: Flushed Away

I’m a nerd. Not the sexy, technoliterate paper millionaire type, more your classic comic-book-steeped, standardized-test-beating geek. The Internet boom turned the traditional jock-nerd order topsy-turvy. Become a star in football, and you can make millions. Become a star in cyberdom, and make billions. And own the football team.

The tech-unsavvy geeks among us, however, were left out of the loop completely, just smart enough to know the next big thing after we saw it go blazing by.

When I first heard of Second Life, I assumed it was for the Dungeons & Dragons set. It’s an online multiplayer game, basically a virtual world where players (over one million strong, now) create characters, or "avatars," that roam about this world and interact. That’s it. There’s no object to this game, no way to "win." Its more popular rival, Worlds of Warcraft (over 7m strong), is your more typical fantasy game, where you go around killing warlocks and acquiring strength points and whatnot. In Second Life, people just…live (if you can call it "life"). You can start a business, hang out at bars, go clubbing, etc. All within the rigid order of Second Life house rules (e.g., no intolerance, no harassment of other players, no "adult" behavior outside of designated Mature Zones, etc.).

At first, I wrote it off as a pastime for people who taught themselves Middle Earth dialects. Then in May of this year, I read a Business Week cover story about Second Life (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm), profiling a (real) woman who makes a (real) low six figure income developing and selling virtual real estate in Second Life. And I thought, hmm. Later, I would read about Suzanne Vega performing a concert exclusively within Second Life to the delight of thousands of avatars. And I thought, hmm. Three weeks ago, I read about Sun Microsystems unrolling one of their new platforms exclusively within Second Life (to reach a wider audience of programmers). Interesting. But not my thing.

What ultimately piqued my interest was the discovery that one of my Harvard Law professors, Charlie Nesson, was teaching a cyberlaw class for the Extension School. Exclusively through Second Life. (http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2006/08/prof_charles_nesson_now_permanently_high.html)

I still didn’t understand it, but I knew this was something big. And I knew there was only one way to figure it out.

Three weeks ago, I downloaded the game onto my computer and created an avatar, named "Motykade Emu" (a combination of the log-in name of one of my colleagues and "emu"). I spent much of the time trying to drown him (not deliberately—you start on something called Orientation Island, and I kept walking into the ocean). I hit on the first attractive avatar I saw (which, in retrospect, was probably some 45-year-old help desk tech in Duquesne) and was promptly rejected (prompting a "Your loss, b*tch!" in flagrant disregard of the harassment policy). After thirty minutes of abject boredom, I parked my guy in a public hammock, where he’s been sleeping ever since.

There are webzines about style trends in Second Life (http://www.secondstyle.com/). It has its own Reuters correspondent (http://secondlife.reuters.com/), a thriving fashion industry (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115888412923570768-zVZuILNMf6YlpTXqtuGcTAWcrWY_20070925.html?mod=blogs), and a real estate market (http://secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php). Virginia politician Mark Warner participated in a townhall meeting in Second Life (http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7963538). Toyota sells cars in Second Life, Adidas sells sneakers, and Starwood has hotels in some of the most desirable locations (http://gigaom.com/2006/08/20/adidas-toyota-come-to-second-life/). Duran Duran has performed inside of Second Life, as have Chamillionaire and Regina Spektor (http://secondlife.com/community/music.php).

"I still don’t get why people play this game," I said to my neighbor Debbie.

"I bet it’s these low-level computer programmers in real life, who don’t have a whole lot of control over their lives," she opined. "In Second Life, they can be attractive, and own nice homes, and interact with people who aren’t going to make fun of them—"

"Actually—"

"—well, when you’re not on. I mean, look at the rules, right? It’s almost like they were designed by people who have been bullied their whole lives. Maybe it’s not just a game for them; maybe it’s a better life they can escape into."

But it’s not like people even escape into Second Life to do cool things, like open a hangliding courier service, or walk around in a suit of live dogs. A lot of people just go in there and set up regular businesses where they work and interact with other avatars. I toyed with the idea of setting up a branch office of my firm in Second Life, promptly leaving work to log on at home and bill several more hours. I’d show up for work looking exhausted. ‘What’s wrong?’ Debbie would ask. I’d look at her, bleary-eyed as I gulped down a 32 oz. cup o’ joe. ‘My cases in Second Life are heating up. Everybody in our office is getting slammed.’

***

This past weekend was our five-year Harvard Law School reunion.

People, for the most part, looked the same, or better. It made sense; considering the age at which most of our classmates started law school, add five years of maturity, plus a steady income, and we were all pretty much coming into our prime.

The first night, I had dinner in Pound Hall at a table full of ’01s with whom I had the sort of generalized familiarity where I couldn’t be sure I’d ever actually met them before. It was tough to catch up with people I’d never actually known law school. But, for the most part, we were all still lawyering. Trade school murders that promise of unpredictability you find at high school and college reunions.

The conversations all weekend ran pretty much the same. ‘Oh, hi (stealing glance at name tag), what do you do now?’ ‘I work at [firm].’ Or, ‘I used to work at [firm] and now I work at [firm].’ ‘That’s great! I hear that’s a good firm.’

Maybe some of us mixed it up by going into teaching, or getting married and having kids, but the past five years were pretty neatly summed in a sentence or two.

On Saturday, I attended a panel discussion by a group of ‘01s. It was thoroughly entertaining, and midway through, I began wishing I had gotten to know more of these people when we all went to school together. Then I began thinking back to how they looked then (how I looked then!). There are reasons, right or wrong, why we associate with the people we do, and were I to encounter them today as they looked the way they were, I don’t know that I would act any differently.

In a sense, maybe what I was seeing were my classmates’ avatars, projections of their best selves, how they had wanted to be back then. And maybe these are the people most likely to return for reunions, sending these stylized versions of themselves to interact with other avatars in this artificial world no longer real for us.

Sharing a cab ride back to my brother’s place, Brandi remarked that it didn’t feel like much time had passed, as though we were all coming back to campus after really long internships. And the tragedy of it is, maybe we haven’t realized where all the time has gone, working at firms. Was this October materially different from how we spent October of last year, or the year before? Would we come back for our ten-year reunion, with just two more sentences to tell each other about what we had done in the past five years?

One night, I tried socializing with alums of different classes. I had the pleasure of running into Gene D, class of ’61. He came over to the table where Soheil and I were sitting with a table full of ’01 women, and exhorted them to grab one of us while they still could. Eugene is like a charming old grandfather, at once acerbic and gregarious. He also has the single greatest business card I’ve ever seen. It reads (center):

Gene D
Retired – No Money
World Traveler
International Lover
Last of the Big Spenders
And in the four corners of the card (clockwise):
No Phone
No Worries
No Address
No Business

I couldn’t help but think that if there were a way to win this game, Gene D has found it.

Onto the game. . .

Wherever the Dallas Cowboys play this season, you can be assured of two things: a wholly media-fabricated WR Terrell Owens controversy and comparisons between QB Drew Bledsoe’s mobility and Stephen Hawking’s. (I think it would be funny if this criticism followed him to other parts of his life as well. Like, if the Bledsoes were contemplating a switch at carving duty on Thanksgiving because Drew "holds onto the knife too long.") This past Sunday, all eyes were on the Cowboys, not just because it was a prime time game, not just because it marked the debut of the enigma, Tony Romo, at QB, but because the Cowboys were taking on the most beloved franchise in all of professional sports, America’s Team, your CAROLINA PANTHERS!

For a quarter, the Panthers were the fearsome machine that led many sportswriters to declare them Super Bowl champs before a game had been played. The Team of Destiny scored the games first TD; then, in the first play off of a Cowboys turnover, Delhomme to Smith 24 yards for a second touchdown! Panthers up 14-0!

The Cowboys would bring it to within four to end the half, but the Big Cat D was suffocating. A demoralized Cowboys squad headed back to the locker room as their fans back home popped open another beer and started listening to some retard song about getting dumped by a girl or kicking Saddam’s ass or a combination thereof.

In the second half, the Panthers dropped the ball. Literally.

Steve Smith, RB DeShaun Foster (whose yards per carry are somewhere between Edgerrin James and an Easter Island head), and QR Keyshawn Johnson all dropped passes. FB Brad Hoover fumbled a punt return, resulting in a Cowboys TD. Steve Smith dropped a punt return, resulting in such bad field position that Delhomme threw an INT to avoid a safety, giving the Cowboys another score instead. If holding onto the ball was going out of style, then the Panthers were the coolest guys in the room.

In the end, though, all the credit in the world has to go to Coach John Fox. Whereas less visionary coaches would have simply put away the inept Cowboys after the first period, Coach Fox understood the psychological edge the Panthers would have playing all of their playoff games on the road, just as they did during their miracle run to the Super Bowl. With the league’s best defense and most versatile offense, why risk bad karma by competing for home field advantage?

For those of us sitting at the feet of genius and gazing in wonderment, all we can say is, why indeed?! The Cowboys left with a technical victory, but the Panthers returned to their locker room head held high, with a standing ovation from a sold-out Bank of American stadium, knowing that the road to the playoffs had officially begun!!!!

Next week: bye

Prediction:

Panthers 3, Bye 0

Until next time.

RROWRRRRRRRR!

Week 7: The Illusionist

On my flight to Chicago last weekend, the woman sitting in my aisle was one
of those fatty chatty types that never found a private conversation she
couldn’t barge into. She was an older white woman, and my poor countryman
shielding her from me was stuck furnishing the bulk of the responses. It
didn’t matter that his English was so fresh-off-the-boat that her rapid-fire
questions curried him in his own confusion; silence was her mortal enemy.

Brotherhood? Whenever my countryman turned to me for help, I would raise my
book closer to my face.

You know how the seats in a plane are so close together that you can’t help
but hear the conversations in the row behind you? On the ground in Chicago,
as we all stood up, this lady turns to the people behind us (having never
introduced herself) and tells the couple, "Enjoy your vacation!" and the
solo male traveler "Cheer hard for your girlfriend this weekend!" "Um," he
said in bewilderment, "I will." "You’ll have to cheer hard for my two
friends too." "Uh…okay." "They were training to run with our youth pastor,
but he died this May." Silence. "Very sad." More silence.

"Do you remember hearing the story about those two brothers who tried to
rescue that kayaker this spring?" she asked, turning around to startle my
countryman. He nodded without any firm grasp of what was being asked.
"Well, all three of them died. But the kayaker was our youth minister."
Her chatter tailed him as they exited the plane ahead of me.

The more he heard about the youth minister, I think, the more he began to
envy him.

People dress up for marathons. I saw a guy running in a Superman suit (with
padding). I also saw a Fred and Wilma Flintstones. The problem is, they
got separated. So, as Wilma ran ahead, the crowd chanted "Toga! Toga!
Toga!" And when Fred came by, people weren’t quite sure what he was
supposed to be (he had taken off the signature blue kerchief for chafing
reasons). One spectator offered: "Go…watermelon slice!"

The race sucked on many levels. It’s a 34,000+-person race, and every year,
the logistics get more difficult. Every race morning becomes a more
frenetic scramble to find a cab. At the race stie, 34,000+ (and more each
year) are squeezing past each other shoulder-to-shoulder trying to get to
(i) the porta-potty lines, (ii) the bag check line, and (iii) their start
corrals, all of which are located in different parts of Grant Park. Not to
mention the fact that it was rainy and in the high thirties.

But my day was still nothing compared to the winner’s. Check out this
finish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWheGgqmq0A

(Update: He spent two nights in the hospital, and has been released.)

Special congratulations to the most exciting team in all of college sports!
The storied Yale Bulldogs pulled an upset win over Penn this past weekend,
propelling them to a 5-1 record to tie them atop the Ivies with Princeton!
With the Tigers ending Harvard’s unbeaten streak the same weekend, both Yale
and Harvard are sitting on 5-1 records with four weeks to go in the season.
Will The Game this year determine the Ivy League championship? Will
Princeton insist it has a rivalry with Yale and Harvard while neither of
them care? Stay tuned!

Onto the game. . .

Having dominated them 52-31 in their previous meeting, America’s Team, the
Appalachian Assassins, your CAROLINA PANTHERS returned to Cincinnati four
years later riding a four-game win streak. But the Bengals were ready for
them, with several key starters returning from injury.

(My paralegal Sophia got a "football injury" this past weekend. Why are you
wearing glasses?, I asked her. I got an eye injury playing football, she
said. What happened?, I asked, suddenly concerned. The girl in front of me
would flip her ponytail back when she hiked the ball, and once it hit me in
the eye.

There are times when it’s better to just make up a story.)

The Panthers were writing their own story, entitled Thanks For Keeping My
Foot Warm With Your Ass. The Tar Heel Terror Squad dominated from coin to
whistle, with touchdowns by TE Kris Mangum and RB Nick Goings putting the
Cats ahead 14-10 through the end of the third! Sensing the futility of
playing against the most dominant team in the history of the NFL, Cincinnati
went with a gutsy call in the fourth, calling a pass play on 4th-and-1.

Would WR Chad Johnson choke? In Cincinnati, birthplace of Henry Heimlich?
A new set of downs and a Houshmandzadeh TD, Bengals up 17-14!

Down by 3, less than six minutes to go. Just another Sunday for Cool Hand
Jake.

The General marched the Panthers downfield and was at third and goal when he
realized his dilemma. Score here, and the Bengals were likely out of the
playoffs. Let them hang on, however, and you increased the chances that
they, rather than a stronger AFC team, would face Carolina in the Super
Bowl.

With laser-like precision, Delhomme guided the ball into the startled hands
of Bengals S Kevin Kaesviharn. Cinci holds onto the ball and the win! What
a virtuoso performance by Pro Bowler Delhomme! What cunning! What presence
of mind!

Next week: Tony Romo gets Made, starting for the Cowboys in Carolina.

Prediction:

Panthers 49, Dallas 6

Until next time.

RROWRRRRRRRR!