Summer of Dan

I loved you since I knew ya

My vacation kicked of on Friday, and the girl and I celebrated in grand fashion by going to see The Simpsons Movie. It made 30 million on just Friday alone, so that should tell you how awesome it was. If it doesn't, well, if you love the nuclear family from Springfield, check it out!!! Fucking hilarious.

With the weather being crazy lately (lightning and thunderstorms all the time) my game was postponed until Labor Day Weekend, which meant a free day to do what the girl and I wanted. We decided to hit the mall with Jessie and go bowling. Although we never made it to bowling, the mall kept us highly entertained, including dinner at Bertucci's where our waitress was loaded with Merlot and saying things like, "You're gonna make me puke" (or something to that effect) and "You drink too much (water and diet soda)" and telling me where to put my silverware. If she wasn't so damn pathetically sad, I think I would have been more offended, but I don't think she realized how she was coming across.

Tonight, the girl and I are hitting one of the most storied stadiums in the entire world: Fenway Park. The Sox are out of town and we're going to the hottest concert of the summer: The Police.

My buddy Mark saw them last night and said it was awesome. From the sounds of it, our seats are even better than his, but let's just hope with all this shitty weather lately we can actually dodge the rain and lightning bullets.

Pretty sweet to see a concert at Fenway, much less a concert that features a band that swore they would never get back together again. We're in store for something special I think :)

Almost kick-off time...

Our season kicks off this weekend in Holyoke against the Mass State Warriors. We’ve done a lot of preparation for them, from Aaron scouting and filming them to me burning DVDs and handing them out at practice to running their Defense for our Offense and our Offense running their Offense against our Defense. People are discounting us as a new team, making predictions based on the fact that we are coming from a league of 4 teams and we’ll get our asses kicked, but they have no idea. We have great coaching, a lot of talent, and I have no doubt in my mind we can pull this one off. One game at a time though. Should be fun.

Either way, here is the schedule for the 2007 season:

                                                                                                                 

Date	Day	Away   Team	Home   Team	Location
7/21/2007	Saturday	Knights	Mass   State Warriors	Roberts Field, Holyoke, MA
7/28/2007	Saturday	N.   Shore Generals	Knights	Tyngsboro HS, Tyngsboro MA
8/4/2007	Saturday	Hillsboro   Devils	Knights	Tyngsboro HS, Tyngsboro MA
8/11/2007	Bye Week
8/18/2007	Saturday	S.   Shore Outlaws	Knights	Tyngsboro HS, Tyngsboro MA
8/25/2007	Saturday	Knights	Maulers	Veteran's Stadium, Lawrence, MA
9/8/2007	Saturday	Knights	Generals	Lynn Tech Field, Lynn, MA
9/15/2007	Saturday	E.   Maine Warriors	Knights	Tyngsboro HS, Tyngsboro MA
9/22/2007	Saturday	Middlesex   Mayhem	Knights	Tyngsboro HS, Tyngsboro MA
9/29/2007	Saturday	Knights	NE   Hurricanes	Landry Stadium, Amesbury, MA
10/6/2007	Saturday	Knights	Connecticut   Thunder	???

Pinkerton Academy opts for practicality over tradition

Being a Pinkerton Academy alumni, I was shocked with two of the more major recent developments at the school. On one of her runs a few weekends back my fiancée ran up to the Pinkerton track to get in a few laps and was absolutely floored by the sight up there: a massive cluster of massive pine trees completely gone. It looked like a bomb went off or a huge avalanche came roaring through, uprooting trees all along the way.

Now, I’m not a tree expert by any stretch, but the trees that were cut down had to have been over a hundred years old for sure. Part of the experience of catching a home game up at the field was walking on the trails through the woods, and seeing the field from the trees and just feeling safe in the confines of the giant elderly pines.

But now that is gone.

I had to know why, and we returned later on to see if we could find something out. There was a youth lacrosse game going on and some parents standing around. We asked if they knew what was happening and one parent proudly said they were moving the softball and baseball fields from near the English wing up there, to centralize and keep all the fields together. I was in shock, because that has always been part of just the sheer size and wonder of the massive campus. Trekking through campus to the various sports was just part of being an Astro and a fan.

The other related development I found out about was there will be a new building constructed where the softball and baseball fields are currently to house Freshmen. Word has it that Freshmen will be in that one building their entire Freshman year, completely cut off from the rest of the campus, completely cut off from the culture of Pinkerton and the upper classmen, completely cut off from being a part of the rat race that makes Pinkerton so wonderful. Pinkerton has always been about diverse cultures and experiences, and by doing this they are radically changing what it has always been about. Before you know it, they’ll start segregating sports, making sure Freshmen only play on the Freshmen teams, no matter how talented they are, not matter how gifted they are. They’ll start making separate clubs for the Freshmen, and the upper classmen. I just don’t get it. If they think it is helping the Freshmen class by distancing them from the rest of the school they are completely wrong. Talk about feeling intimidated: you are at a school for an entire year, you still don’t know the layout of the school because you are confined to one building, and you still feel like you aren’t ever a part of the school itself. How does that help them?

Freshmen have always had an extra day, before all the upper classmen came back to school, to become oriented with their surroundings and the buildings, to not feel intimidated. If they are so worried about this sort of thing, what they should do is send the Freshmen back a few days early so they can get some useful time in, maybe even a whole week before the rest of the school comes back. In turn, they should be able to end their Freshman year a week earlier. They should try that for a few years and if it doesn’t work they should look to other alternatives, but this concept of one building for Freshmen is sending quite the message.

I’ve talked to more than a few of my friends and family that went to Pinkerton and all were shocked if not angry about it and I easily understand why. It can’t be about being practical here because you’re only setting the kids up for issues later on, you’re spending money on a building dedicated solely to just Freshmen, and you’re sending the wrong message: you’re saying they can’t hack it with the rest of the school and they need to be coddled. I’m not super old school, after all, I graduated in 1998, but I think there is too much coddling going on anyways, and I think this is just adding to the issues. I’ve heard of Little League baseball rules where if you hit a Homerun it only counts as a double, because they don’t want the other kids to feel bad. At the same time, another ridiculous rule is no matter what the real score is, at the end of the game they rule it a tie so nobody loses. Are you kidding me??? What are we trying to do here with kids? Are we trying to protect them and their feelings? Or do we not want to have to help them deal with failure and build them back up after? It seems to me that is the case.

Imagine this: your son or daughter grows up playing in one of these leagues where they don’t know failure and adversity and how to win and lose, and then they hit high school where they are coddled even more and put into a building for a year with no upper classman, not having a chance to interact with adversity there at all or even form relationships and bonds with different people. Now they go out into the real world and face adversity: how are they going to handle it? Or do you even care?

I’ve thought about this a lot, and at first thought I was making a huge stink about nothing, but the more I think about it the more I am confused and angry about the whole situation. I know Headmaster Mary Anderson at Pinkerton isn’t an evil figure, and I know she is doing all of this because she feels that it is practical to put the fields together, and that for reasons I can’t explain, she thinks it makes sense to put Freshmen in the same building, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

Mobil…on the run

The other night I was coming back to Derry from my coach’s house to get some film. I was on the phone with Flack as I was going to the Derry Circle Mobil. I needed some water for the girl and I wanted some PowerAde for practice later in the week.

I walked into the gas station pretty late, it was like 9pm or so and the place was empty save for the kid behind the counter and a friend. He barely noticed me when I came in. At this point I was still talking to Flack as I was gathering up my stuff. As I hit the counter I saw a sign on the debit/credit card machine that said “Minimum Debit/Credit Purchase $5.00”. Now, I’ve been to the place before and totally spaced it, but as I saw it, I signaled to the kid to hang on a second because I had no cash and I needed to buy more shit so I could use my card. He seemed pretty cool with it and understood and kept gabbing away to his butt buddy. I came back to the counter and he helped a guy who wandered off the street and smelled like cheap ass cigarettes and donkey ass. My stuff was still on the counter but hey, I got out of line, I was cool with waiting. By the time I got to the counter (still on the phone mind you) there were about 4 people behind me.

Being one of those guys that uses his Debit card absolutely everywhere, I am quite skilled in the Art of Debiting. I’ve used a million of those little machines, from the ones at Target that suck in your card and spit it back out at you, to the PayPass system you just wave your card at, to the keypads where they swipe it behind the counter and you enter your number on a calculator thing, to the original swipe and punch standard machine. This one was pretty fucking slow. I swiped and it took about 10 seconds to ask me if I wanted Credit or Debit so I waited while Ass Pirate bagged my stuff up. I typed in my code and waited again because I knew it would say “Are you really fucking sure you really want to…OMG…debit your account for $6.03???” Again, the machine was slow but I had my bag in hand already and was waiting for it to prompt me and even before it prompted me Blumpkin Boy behind the counter decided to get mouthy and cute in front of his newly acquired audience.

“Can you just press the damn button already?”

I was half laughing half in shock by this 110 lb. little bitch’s response to me. I just replied, “What’s with the fucking attitude?”

“Come on man, you’re on the damn phone, it’s rude as hell.”

Yes, that’s right: Mr. Tough Guy that spit “Can you just press the damn button already?” at me was telling me I was being rude.

Normally I can see his point, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Flack asked me what was up and on the way out I told him loud enough for everyone to hear that some kid at a Mobil making $5.15 an hour was giving me shit, acting tough in front of his audience. Being the great friend he is, Flack offered to bail me out of jail if something went down. Highly appreciated.

So rewind a bit: if I was one of those loud assholes talking about getting drunk, or laid, or how my balls were swollen from my weekend in Boston, or was extremely vulgar, or was totally ignoring the kid behind the counter or totally discounting the fact that there were people behind me and not caring about the prompts on the machine, fine, I’m completely understanding about that. But it wasn’t like that way at all. In fact, I told Jen later on if I was a businessman in a nicely pressed suit and came in and the same shit happened, that kid wouldn’t have fucking looked at me and said boo.

The other day Jen and I walked in there and who was behind the counter but Mr. Mouth. There was another girl working there and Jen insisted on buying our drinks so there wouldn’t be a “misunderstanding”. He recognized me and asked if I was all set, and I just replied, “How’s it going? No, I’m fine”. I could tell he didn’t think he’d see me again. Maybe I should make it a habit to visit more often…

I saved the receipt and when I get to remembering I plan on calling the Manager to tell him how much of an assmonkey his little mouthy boy behind the counter was to me. Should be an interesting conversation.

There's a freight train coming...

The girl and I were at Sports Authority the other night trying various things on when I wandered into the football section. I needed a new mouth piece and happened upon kid sized football pads.

What some might not know is the passion of football burns brightly within The Niff. I didn't have to coax her into trying on some pads and showing me what was up...

If the Niff was coming your way, wouldn't you want to get out of the way?? Look at those pipes and that game day face!!!

Thank God my phone has a good camera to capture the moment.

Meet my new wallpaper.

Being flexible can't hurt...right??!?

So the girl and I had our second Bikram Yoga session together today. I figured it could help me with football, since I'm the least flexible human on the planet.

Now, Bikram Yoga isn't just normal yoga. They crank the heat in the room to 106 degrees and you sweat your balls off. You put yourself in uncompromising positions, try to bend yourself into a pretzel, and drip gallons of water. I literally drank almost 3 liters of water during the 90 minutes of the session.

Sometimes I feel like I am adequate at a few of the positions, other times I feel like a complete moron, but I'm getting there. One of the most simple goals of it all is to stay in the room for the entire 90 minutes, and to also attempt all positions. This makes me feel good, because I've done both each time I've done it.

It is very taxing, and I feel very weak after, but it is worth it I think. Who knows, some day I'll be able to do the toestand:

Playing against your boy

It’s always a weird thing when you play against one of your good friends, especially when you are on defense and they play offense. Not this weekend but the previous Sunday we played against Lowell and Will. Will played well and it was good playing against a AAA team. I had a shot to hit him once but his running back saw me coming in at him and made a play. We lost but we felt like with some more execution we could have held our own. It was 14-7 at the half Lowell, and after that they got some scores on turnovers that wouldn’t have necessarily have happened because of the format of the scrimmage.

It was good though, and I think Lowell will do some damage this year but they have some competition in AAA. Playing against two AAA teams this preseason and one A team I think has helped us and will help us this weekend. We’ll find out soon enough.

Blades don’t need reloading

Last night I had one of the most vivid Zombie Dreams ever. As I’ve written here before, my dreams really affect me. It’s not like I can see the future or anything insane like that, but they just almost live with me.

I had a dream I borrowed my father’s old van (van he used to own 10 years ago) and we hit my grandparent’s house for the party we’re really going to tomorrow. As we were leaving, the van wouldn’t turn over until we popped the hood and got some help. We went home, which turned out to be my dad’s house where I used to live before becoming an adult and moving out.

It was weird, because it was the house, but even bigger. I heard on the news that Zombies were everywhere. I looked at my Uncle Pat and asked him how much ammo he had, and between my dad and him we had some but not a lot. Being a martial arts loving family, my dad and uncle have always had various swords and medieval looking things hanging on the wall so I grabbed two Samurai swords, Pat grabbed a broadsword, my dad grabbed a pair of kamas, and Jackie grabbed these two ballsy looking swords that wrapped around his arms like a coiled snake and we were ready.

I stepped onto the porch as I saw about 10 of them come out of the woods. We all waited for them, with all the women upstairs hiding in the closet in the master bedroom. As soon as one of them stepped onto the deck I flipped the fuck out and started spinning my swords like I was some sort of weapons master, turning into a high speed Ginsu blender. I really got into it, as I took out 8 of them while they took out the remaining two.

After that, I woke up. Sadly, it was time to go to work, and I couldn’t learn more about the impending Zombie invasion, but heed this advice: guns are great, but blades don’t need reloading. I think it’s time to hit the crazy man booth at the local Flea Market this weekend to stock up on supplies.

You think I’m joking.

A weekend full of all the right stuff

Last weekend was a busy one for sure. We had a million little things to do, but were able to wrap them up into one very constructive and eventful two days.

Saturday I kicked off the weekend going to my favorite place: the dump.*insert extreme sarcasm here* You see, where we live, the dump is like a redneck fest: let’s see who can bring the most tricked out redneck rides with the most trash with the loudest music and nastiest looking bitches with them. Seriously, half the time I think it’s some old South reunion that I missed the boat on. There was one guy that had tires that put his truck so high I could almost easily see the undercarriage for his truck when parked next to him.

You always have the usual trashies, the ones that love the guys that work at the dump (who are all nice guys by the way) but just love standing there in the filth and smell as if it wasn’t there. It takes a special breed to be like that, let me tell you.

After the dump, the girl and I hit TJMaxx. Highly underrated store. Place has tons of brand name stuff for low prices. Growing up I thought that place was where old people went, but there is a ton of good shit in there. I saw a portable set of speakers for an iPod Video on the cheap so I snagged it for Kraig. Even though I don’t have a video, I knew he had one and we’ve always said how the iPods should come with speakers built in so I figured he’d like them.

I had Aaron’s camcorder that he needed so he could scout a couple teams and film so the girl and I ventured out to his place to drop it off. Flack was there, along with his little protégé Cowboy, both ready to cut down trees with their hands and flip cars.

*Side Note: Aaron is my coach, and he does these training sessions with anyone that wants to do them. They’re similar to what the Worlds Strongest Men do in competition, like flipping huge tractor tires, pulling massive chains, and running up a hill with a 3 second head start with a Grizzly Bear chasing you. We did a few of these crazy things in the first few practices this season.*

Flack and Cowboy just finished their warm up run through the woods…not sure what else they were planning on doing, but the girl and I had too many things to do to partake in such Medieval activities.

One errand was getting lunch. We hit a place close to James’ parents house called G&P Pizza. Good little Greek place. They have these huge TVs on the wall along with these mini tableside consoles where you can play real time trivia against everyone in the place. It kinda sucks though when the place is dead like it was and you are playing against yourself…and you still continue to suck. Some of the trivia was about TV characters from the 60s, stuff I had no fucking chance at getting, so I didn’t feel too bad.

We headed up to Hookett after to go to Legends, which has mini-golf, a driving range, and batting cages. We were there for the batting cages, always a good time when you step into a cage and you actually pay to have balls shot at you in the excess of 80 mph. If they were always pitched to the same spot I’d be fine with it, but one of these days I’ll take a shot to the nuts and it will be lights out for me for a long ass time.

The girl took her hacks in the softball cage and once she got over the ball she was ripping hits left and right. I was in the cage next to her that had both softball and baseball, and being the macho man I am figured the baseball setting would be fine for me, since it afterall was connected to a machine that lobbed softballs.

Wrong. Dead fucking wrong.

It was like Nolan Ryan was reborn into a mechanical fast pitch baseball arm. This thing was throwing some serious fucking heat. After the first pitch I knew I was screwed. I made contact most of the time and actually drove a few balls out of the infield, but a few times the ball just exploded into the handle and made my hands numb. I felt like a little kid all over again. After that, I had enough and cranked the softball one up and took out my frustrations from Nolan Ryan on the giant grapefruit sized balls.

Meanwhile, the Niff was showing the softballs who was boss. She’d make a great first basewoman in some softball league. She can catch, she can hit, and she doesn’t even throw like a girl! Who would have thought!

To reward our efforts in the field of play we went to a small ice cream place near where we used to live and each got a cone and enjoyed the sun. We hit a small park near there and just laid on a blanket and relaxed for a bit before tossing the baseball around for a bit before hitting Target.

Target is always an experience. There isn’t one within 10 minutes of where we live, but there is one 20 minutes north and 20 minutes south of us, so when we hit Target, we hit Target. I can never walk out of there without spending at least $50, the same way I can’t walk out of Sam’s Club without spending at least $120. Not sure what it is about the place, but it brings out the impulse buyer in me like no other place.

After Target the girl gave me a haircut. She got the clippers out and went short, like really short, but I love it. Low maintenance, I think it looks good and she loves it so what else do I need? The cats seemed to enjoy watching all my hair get shaved off. Maybe they need a haircut…hmmmm…

Sunday, the girl and I met James and Megan at The Yard for brunch. It’s a solid brunch with all of your normal breakfast fixin’s plus stuff like lasagna, Swedish meatballs, hot wings, stuffed mushrooms, ham hash, French toast and pancakes, a full carving station with a ham, turkey, and roast beef, not to mention the giant dessert table that features at least a dozen kinds of cakes, including 3 types of cheesecake and puddings and stuff.

Now, when you go to these types of eateries, you know the average customer is going to be fairly large. Rule number 1 is never eat while in line, and Rule number 2 is don’t make faces at what other people have on their plates. It’s just fucking rude, and if I want to eat $12 worth of watermelon or cheese and crackers, I will mother fucker. It leaves more of the other food for you fattie so sit back, relax, and pound away at your gut.

So we’re sitting there at our table, which is right next to the buffet line, and this huge ass woman looks over my shoulder while I am sitting at my table and makes some noises like she is shocked that someone:

a.)had that much food on their plate

b.)had too little food on their plate

c.)was eating copious amounts of cheese and crackers (think cheese as in e Port Wine variety, or close)

d.)was simply enjoying the variety of the buffet

e.)All of the Above

I might be big boned, but I have a heart lady, a fairly healthy one at that. I can’t stand people that judge people, especially of all places a fucking buffet! I am probably one of the smaller people to eat at a buffet, so I don’t know what her problem was (besides the obvious).

After brunch we hit the mall for a bit, hanging in Best Buy for most of the time we were there. As we were walking in a little chipmunk dashed into the store causing mass havoc. Some stupid redneck NASCAR douche bag tried stomping on him (the NASCAR race was going on here in New Hampshire later that day). I think I would have pulled a flat panel off the wall and bashed her in the face if she actually succeeded in killing him. He eventually was escorted out of the building via a friendly trashcan.

With all the excitement the mall had to offer I was ready for a nap, so we headed home and I did just that. I took a two hour nap before practice to recharge the old batteries. As I was about to wake up the girl finally drifted off. We were like damn zombies as I was getting ready for practice. She told me later she fell back asleep after I left and the brunch just sucked the energy out of her. I had sympathy, as that’s how I fee after practice every week.

It was a busy weekend, a productive one at that. This weekend is already filled with plans to the brim. Tomorrow morning, Steve, Kraig, James, and I are hitting the movies early to see The Transformers. Saturday afternoon the girl and I are hitting my grandparent’s party at the lake for Nana’s 75^th birthday and Papa’s 80^th. They’re both over 155 years old combined and are still kicking ass and taking names. I hope I’m as badass as they are when I’m their age. Sunday we have my scrimmage against Will and Lowell. That should be interesting to say the least.

1408: Awesome Matinee Movie Bitches!

Most people agree that stories that are written for books are always better than the movie, but when it comes to Stephen King and his short stories, that isn’t always the case, in fact, it’s the exact opposite.

The girl and I saw 1408 starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson the other day. We went into it with an open mind, and came out even more pleasantly surprised than we anticipated. Cusack is awesome, he’s one of those endearing characters, quick witted and has that dry sense of humor all the time. Jackson is vintage Jackson: always over the top, always has a point to make, and always seems content in the end, no matter what happens.

It’s not a gory movie, it’s one of those thriller/mystery/drama/black comedy type movies that are highly entertaining. It’s similar in style to Secret Window, another King story that turned into an even better movie.

The twists and ending are totally unexpected, and if you think it’s like Secret Window because it plays out like SW, you’ll be even more surprised at the end.