Good Morning, Heartache

You're like an old friend,
Come to see me again.

I went to The Game this weekend! It was me, Devin, Maggie, Tom, Ted, Katie, Dan, Emma, Katharine, Previn, Nate, and some cetera. I'd never been to this or any other football game at all, ever, and I hadn't been back to campus (as far as I remember) since graduation.

We arrived in New Haven at around 9:00ish, I think, and stopped off at Rudy's (across the street from 123 Howe where I lived the summer after junior year) for drinks. It was a real mad-house, and New Haven was absolutely goddamn freezing. I think there's something wrong with my boots -- my toes were like ice the whole weekend whenever we were outside, and my socks would be wet whenever I took the boots off, even when there it hadn't been raining outside. Maggie said, helpfully, that I should get myself checked for diabetes. But I digress. Devin and I broke away from the group for a while to take a walk around campus. We talked about what it would be like if we sort of jumped back into student life after having been in the working world for two and a half years; I still find it hard to believe that we (or I, at least) made it all the way through. It's sort of like a four-year pressure cooker. At the same time, though, I think people can pretty much adapt to anything; I never really felt like I couldn't handle it at any point of my college career, even when I actually couldn't handle it. Anyway, we all got totally blasted and eventually returned to Ted's house and conked out.

The next morning at around 10:00 AM we headed out to the tailgate, which is this big binge-drink that happens before the game actually starts. I tagged along with Previn while he said hello to a bunch of his friends at the Harvard half of the tailgate; I was hoping I might run into some of my Harvard "friends," but none of them seemed to be there. We ended up grabbing some gross little hamburgers from the Yale Dining Services tent -- the staff recognized us, which was nice and unexpected. I miss having an unlimited supply of gummy (yet fiber-rich) cafeteria food. The tailgate was a little dispiriting, since it was so chock-a-block with assholes; the Yale Heavyweight Crew team, for example, was having a "homeless party," replete with a trashcan fire and a bunch of douchebags from Greenwich, CT who'd slashed up their leather bomber jackets and sewed patches into their corduroy pants. I took a picture for evidence's sake but it didn't come out.

A cold morning in the Elm City

At around 1:30 we hit the stadium. Half-time was just finishing up and Yale was ahead 14-3. I tried to follow the action on the field, but I was so cold and it was so far away that I ended up just watching the clock wind down. No funny pranks or anything this year as far as we could tell, though some Harvard kids managed to lure Handsome Dan over to their side of the stadium, and the campus police had to go retrieve him. The fourth quarter finished in a tie, 24-24, and during overtime Yale fudged two or three plays and Harvard was able to score another point or something; we left before that happened. Pictures follow:

The new Handsome Dan inflatable: Wrinkly

The Yale Bowl, 180 BC

A happier group of fans have I never seen

At one point, this guy in front of us a few rows down just put his head down and started puking. He and his buddy were eventually herded away by security, but afterwards people would keep walking through the puke like they weren't seeing it was all over the goddamn ground. We kept yelling at them, "You're walking in puke! You just stepped in vomit!" But they never learned. Turns out that guy wasn't the only puker -- the tunnel we used to exit the Bowl during Yale's last-second choke session had like four pukes in it. Boola boola!

It was already getting dark as we walked back to campus from the Bowl; we headed over to Master Krauss's residence at Silliman for a little alumni reception. I crapped in the dining hall bathroom, which brought back some memories. Dean Flick stopped by for a chat while we were all reclining in the Master's common room. Apparently he thought I'd been dating The Rase all this time; I set him straight on that one. After Master Krauss kicked us out, some people wanted to "see the new couches in the dining hall common room," so we went over there, but there were no new couches. Some people went to this sushi place called Miya's to drink "sake bombs," which I think are shots of sake mixed with a half pint of Japanese beer. Katharine and Emma and I ditched out and went back to Rudy's, though I did take a picture of a swordfish at Miya's.

Don bites the bullet

Real or really really real?

Later on, in front of Yorkside Pizza, Katharine and I saw this girl sitting on the curb who looked borderline vomitous. We were going to offer her some help, but Ran, who'd showed up out of nowhere, alerted us to the fact that the Ford Explorer that the girl looked ready to puke on had D.C. plates and was actually packed with Secret Service. "If she throws up, they can handle it," he said. I'd hope so.

We played Mafia at Ted's house that night; the Mafia took the initiative by eliminating one of their own during the first night, which totally threw Ted for a loop. It was a very long day. I still feel kind of strung-out from being consecutively pickled. But, you know, when in Rome...

I got home late and drunk from a work-related party last Thursday and found the following message on my answering machine -- I couldn't even make it out completely at the time and I just decided it was a wrong number. Well, I just sat down and transcribed it:

Hello, how do you do? Do you notice that a lot of Spanish still have that itching powder, like, in the schools, they have 'em a lot and they don't like the teacher or something. They'll throw it on 'em, that white itching powder. Like in Dodge High School in uh... and John F. Kennedy in the Bronx. They don't like the teacher or the substitute or something, they'll just throw it on 'em all day long, they think it's funny. Anyway, this is a random phone call. Have a nice day. Bye.

Hmmm. Not clear what this means.

On the way home from CT we stopped off at a rest stop on the Hutch and we bought some gross things for lunch. While I was waiting on line to pay, though, I caught a glance of myself from behind in the security camera monitor, and it turns out I have this huge bald spot right in the back of my head. Not like a thin part that's exposed by combing my hair a certain way, but an honest-to-god bald spot. Jesus. I don't want to put any of that hair tonic shit on my scalp; if this is what Mendel had in mind for me, then so be it. But maybe Mer was right when she said I should find someone to marry me before I lose all my hair.