so, last friday was elvis night at sox park. bill is a tireless promoter of elvis night, and i had agreed ages ago that i’d go this year. probably right after i punked on elvis night last year.

i watched the game for a while, conversing intermittantly with the guys who showed up to keep me company. then one of them, c., who was sitting next to me, started quizzing me on what i knew about baseball. this was more than a little disconcerting. i hadn’t realized that a prerequisite of attending elvis night was proving that my i was a true enough fan.

he asked me several times, “so tell me, what do you know about baseball,” which resulted in me just sort of giving him a “wtf?” blank stare. i mean, what the hell kind of question is that? what sort of answer are you looking for? “i know it’s a game”? “i know you hit the little ball with the stick and then you run around the thingy”? “i don’t know, i’ve never been to a game before”?

i finally said something like, “i know that timo got walked because the pitcher smacked him with the ball,” which distracted him for a minute, and then he came back with some question which i answered by ruminating a little bit on the standings. this garnered me an approving, “oh, so you are a fan!” response, which i suppose proved my baseball street cred.

i found it to all be very odd. i’m used to showing up to meetings and having men treat me like i’m the secretary, but i don’t expect the little woman routine at a fucking baseball game. look, if i wasn’t interested in the game, i wouldn’t have been watching the game such that you had to specifically get my attention every time you asked me a question, okay?

all social annoyances (such as the hellspawn children in the row below us) aside, the game itself was a disappointment. the bosox spanked the whitesox. it was a slaughter. it wasn’t even interesting to watch after the third or so inning. oh well.

after the game ended, the elvises really came out. first there was an elvis dance squad, then an elvis impersonator came out and sang and romanced all the first-row ladies around home plate, giving up scarf after scarf — fortunately, he had a scarf boy replenishing his supply after each gift. amusingly enough, “Elvis” (Shawn K-something, i can’t recall, from memphis) not only sang “In The Ghetto,” but actually said, “this is for you!” before doing so. yes, we sox fans are ghetto, but, could you have been a little less corny?

then, the skydiving elvises, The “E” Team, Elvises of the Sky. the sky-elvi were a mild disappointment, as there were only four of them — i wasn’t exactly sure on how many to expect, but was hoping for a small herd of them, falling down like snowflakes. the four of them jumped in lit jumpsuits, but that was pretty much their schtick — they didn’t sing or dance or anything. bummer.

but then there was this absolutely spectacular fireworks display, which was really cool, and went on for probably twenty minutes or so. the fireworks were really stunning. they pulled out all the stops. and they were quite well synched up to the music, which meant they were a lot of fun.

anyways, after the game, the Group W Bench and i retired back to bill’s place. i was still in kind of a shit mood, after having been quasi-ditched then forced to answer questions about whether or not i was a good enough fan (by a Cubs fan, no less, who actually argued with me over my decision to switch my primary baseball fandom from the Cubs to the Sox — my one good shot was that it was largely due to Cubs fans being assholes), then never-ending discussions about the pleasantest aspects of work, so when the group detoured through Jewel to buy beer, i decided to buy a bottle of fizzy wine, and kill it.

as for the fizzy wine, bill wouldn’t let me open my own bottle, out of fear i was going to shoot the cork at his decor, which i thought was quite strange because (a) shooting the cork is obnoxious and (b) it wasn’t like we’d had such a stellar game that celebratory, excessive wine fizzing was warranted. nonetheless, i drank my fizzy wine, and decorated my glass with the assorted plastic cocktail animals i’d found at the jewel checkout, which i had thought were a party necessity that evening. the animals were very popular; all the monkeys were claimed first. i claimed two for myself: one for my glass, and one for my earring. the first was stolen, out of my glass when i wasn’t looking, by someone who decided to suspend it from his nipple ring (!), and the second leapt from my earring to its certain death eightteen stories below bill’s balcony. and my disconsolate cries of “monkey!” were to no avail. my poor monkey!

nonetheless, i didn’t drink nearly enough to justify my foray into emo-blogitude, which i try to avoid at most points as a general rule. i bought a sticker at defcon for which i am still contemplating the ideal placement on my laptop, which reads “why don’t you just go cry about it on your livejournal,” which pretty much sums up a lot of my contempt for many personal (as opposed to topical) blogs. but, i figured, once in a while is permissable. besides, it’s not as though i didn’t take shit for it later.

so, that was my friday night. and this is too fucking long, so i’m going to elide any further commentary, and quite probably delete some of what i’ve already written. brevity is probably a virtue.