some words to not

it was a truly american evening.

due to time and navigation constraints i ended up watching game four at 'spirit' and boy was i out of my demographics. the harvard m.b.a crew cut was mandatory and everyone was dressed business-casual.

four huge tvs were blasting the game to a packed crowd all facing north stretching their necks and donning blue and red caps. the girls of course wore pink caps to match their straight blonde hair and delicate makeup. it was so packed that people were almost touching each other which led to an incessant rattle of 'excuse me's and 'sorry's.

cheers were standardized to hoots and 'yeah's whenever boston scored an out or a hit alternating with 'aw's when the cardinals did well. sometimes there was an attempt for a more prolongued cheer but the dynamics of baseball swiftly silenced it allowing everyone to take another sip out of their beers.

the 7th inning stretch featured a touching 'god bless america' which many of my barmates joined in with alcohol-induced enthusiasm.

ads very almost exclusively for trucks reminding us again and again that these were only dramatizations with professional drivers on closed courses. the exception was the much-coveted first ad after the game which was a kerry campaign ad with audio drowned in the slightly longer cheers. the only thing you could see were the titles spelling 'the world's strongest military' and 'the world's best intelligence' in that annoying slow horizontal fly through that apparently every single word screend on tv needs to comply to. kerry's titles were cast over the statue of liberty which i thought was ironic coz you can't even climb it anymore since the americans are so scared of terror attacks. at the end kerry's face came up subtitled with the words 'john kerry endorses this message' something that wasn't clear by the mere observation that he is actually *saying* this message.

post-game people were very happy and whenever the cheers tapered off a little a replay of that last mientkiewicz ground out brought the moment back to life. some even wanted to hug and it was fascinating to watch their drive for official post-victory cheers (as seen so often on tv) battle their homophobia as they were looking for manly enough partners for a little hand-on-back action.

on the screen pedro acccepts the trophy waving not a stars-and-stripes but a flag of the dominican republic america's 'nice' cuba. and on his head a baseball cap that already has the words 'boston red sox 2004 world champions' embroidered on it. i guess they saw it coming.

backdropped against sports-style 'chrome' font (which i thought was out since the late 80s) sox owner john henry said that not only people in new england have been waiting for this for 86 years but people all over the united states have been waiting for this moment hell people all over the world actually. ignoring the fact that people 'all over the world' do really not care about baseball at all.

on my way home strangers passing me clinched their hands into a fist pulled their elbow down and said 'woo-hoo' in as stranger-affectionate a manner as i've ever seen a bostonian pedestrian and will probably ever again.