A Manly Exchange of Emails Concerning Football, Football, Biking and Poetry

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Pat and I are going to a UFL game in beautiful Frisco. (To which many will say: Huh?) Notice that Pat *spelled pom-pons correctly.

Michael,

I had to pull in some favors, but being a sports columnist and all I was able to get two seats on the 50 yard line. A miracle no one grabbed these tickets.

So, it’s New York Sentinels vs. California Redwoods, October 17, 2009 6:00PM PST @ AT&T Park - San Francisco, CA.

Of course we must purchase the appropriate jackets, hats, cushions, coolers, pom- pons, and the rest.

On another topic. Can’t think of a graceful way to back out of this but I can't (make it) to your ancestral cottage to watch the Cal game,


Patrick

Patrick:

I am there on October 17. As for the Cal game, I thought you had invited me to your digs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Crossed paths would have been funny. But it’s now moot. Turns out we have A’s tickets, which I want to use more out of curiosity than anything else. We went to a game about a month ago where the announced attendance was 12k, but it looked like half that. Eydie said let’s move closer down to an empty row – that vixen – and she seemed to enjoy the game on account of the weird emptiness. Also, I felt obligated to shout a lot to fill the silence, and that amused her.

But no more about that. My mind is filled with thoughts of Redwoods- Sentinels. Oh I did brag a lot about our biking success to Richmond Marina and beyond on yesterday, that showed (in Tennyson’s words) much have we lost but much remains.

Go, Redwoods.

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Life is Not Smooth. It is Filled with Kinks, Which Makes It a Marvelous Spectator Sport

Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight political numbers guru, who some of us were previously acquainted with because of his esoteric work with baseball statistics, explains today that he became interested in politics only a couple of years ago. Turns out he was supplementing his baseball numbers-crunching biz by playing poker online for money.

This online gaming came to the attention of Congressional bluenoses. They concocted a bill to stop it, which they velcroed to the bottom off an unrelated bill.

(F)ollowing the debate over the (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 ) was one of the primary motivators that got me into politics. It took a "dirty trick" -- attaching it to an unrelated conference report that couldn't possibly be voted down -- to get (it) to become law, although then again, this was undertaken partly in response to another "dirty trick", which was the process of anonymous holds that was preventing the bill from coming to a floor vote in the Senate (where it would probably have passed on its own merits). I found the whole process of watching the sausage getting made alarming -- but also utterly fascinating. Without poker -- and without that bill -- there probably wouldn't have been any FiveThirtyEight.

What did Hamlet say? By indirections we find directions out? If I hadn't taken an education class my junior year of college that involved observing an eighth grade classroom once a week and if I hadn't been afraid of eighth graders as a result, I would never have applied to grad school, which I did not to pursue a career but to avoid having to begin one for as long as I could.

And if E. hadn't missed supper that same year and asked me to drive to the Outpost Cafe to pick up a little something for her to eat -- and thus tipped the balance between hesitation and yearning with which I regarded her -- I might never have *claimed my reward* for fetching that meal (the reward being a date to go to the movies).

I'm not saying everything in life is contingent, just more than we think. I don't believe in destiny, you see, that soporific compounded of vanity and excuse.

I don't believe in luck either, but I know it when I see it.

A Day for Us

A's-Jays yesterday afternoon, Dvorak's Stabat Mater as performed by the Berkeley Community Orchestra and Chorus at St. Joseph's the Worker Catholic Church last night.

I'd seen the A's lose before but never heard the Dvorak. E. seldom gives herself a full day of pleasure. I do my best to revel for two, of course.