Eggs are good for all types of things. They can be thrown at people. They can be cracked open on people's heads. They can even be cracked open on the heads of people who are throwing them. Most importantly, however, eggs can be literary devices. They can raise the age-old brain-teaser, \Which came first: the chicken or the egg?"" Or be featured in the world's greatest stock tip: ""Don't put all your eggs in one basket.""
But what's the best lesson to be learned from our protein-filled pal (other than the obvious rule, ""Last one to the ice cream truck is a rotten egg"")? The mother of all cautionary advice: ""Don't count your chickens before they hatch.""
Instead of waiting for my eggs to hatch before counting my chickens, I had my chicken countdown in permanent marker. That's right, folks, I waxed poetic in last week's column on the wonder of the MLB playoffs-about how wonderful it is being able to see your team virtually every night for almost a month, allowing you to cast aside other obligations guilt-free-but never, in the last week, actually watched an entire game.
Last Monday afternoon, my cable got cut. Of course, for the average couch potato or slacker, those last four words are about as scary to hear as these four: ""Sorry, we don't deliver."" But I was all right at first. After all, I am a fully functioning, socially adjusted college student with plenty of stuff to do. What do I care if I lose my cable?
When you think about it, nothing actually happens on ""Laguna Beach."" And any time I've been watching the Game Show Network long enough to find Regis Philbin intentionally funny, I feel worthless anyway...
...Then I stopped kidding myself. I don't like TV because of the crap that producers put on the networks these days (or even the brilliance in syndication; I have access to all the DVDs). I like TV because it's what I depend upon for sports.
A Madison Waste Management truck mistakenly plowed through our cable wire with its forklift that empties all the dumpsters. Our cable provider was a bit slow in coming to repair it and then some problems arose when they were trying to hook it back up (let's just say the company thought my roommates and I had graduated from the ""Heroin-Addict School of Bill-Paying"").
With the baseball playoffs on the horizon, the timing could hardly have been worse. I saw three innings of the entire Sox series, and they were all Game 1. I hate imposing on my friends and going over to their place to watch a game they wouldn't otherwise be watching (not to mention I live with approximately 30 guys that I would otherwise depend on for just this), so I figured I would find a bar on State Street and catch all the games there.
So there I am, deprived of the ultimate distraction (the pipeline to sports you might take for granted) and yet not any more productive. My friend Avi astutely noted that when you're doing work, TV is nothing more than a nice incentive. If you are finishing work you can plan on rewarding yourself with the late ""SportsCenter"" before drifting off to sleep. Without it, what's your reward? Time to curl up with a nice book and culture yourself? Of course not, you just spent three hours reading-at that point, reading ""for fun"" sounds oxymoronic, if not just plain moronic.
In the last week, I was cut off from the three Red Sox games, the Badger game on Saturday, as well more college football than I can name (ESPN, The Deuce, FSN, etc.) and the longest playoff game in history (ESPN). They played two games in one (with Clemens in relief, the sports world in disbelief) and I missed it.
Avi and my other friend Chris were as distraught as I was at the prospect of being out of touch with sports for a whole week. Avi is a fellow Red Sox fan. Chris is a Yankee fan. They decided to go out on Wednesday night to catch the doubleheader at Buffalo Wild Wings. They watched the White Sox take a 2-0 series lead before tiring of the atmosphere and reluctantly finding the big screen at Pizza di Roma for the Yankee game. They lasted only a few innings, however, and decided to leave once they-as Chris put it-""started to feel homeless.""
I tried to watch a game at State Street Brats but I sorely missed my channel-flipping, score-checking capabilities. The one game I caught was the Badger game Saturday. I went to Memorial Union and watched the game on a big projector in the Rathskeller with a couple friends, which was nice because never once did I feel as if any on-lookers would assume I was disinterested in the game, but rather particularly interested in finding shelter.
As you all know, the game ended in heartbreak, though I did get to see Jonathan Orr put on his Lee Evans cape. Had I only seen the box score, I might have thought, ""Well hey, the Badgers put up 48 points and Tyrell Sutton is probably six feet, 280 pounds with 3.5 speed, so no wonder we couldn't stop him."" But I did watch. So I know we could have scored 60, and that Sutton isn't capable of light speed-he's just capable of breaking arm tackles.
So maybe it's a blessing that I haven't had access to sports for the past week. My friends back home in Boston tell me I'm lucky because I didn't see Graffanino's error or El Duque's Pedro Martinez impression. A part of me has to agree. From reading all the recaps of the series, it sounds like the Red Sox really laid an egg.
Ben is a junior majoring in mathematics. He can be reached for comment at bphubner@wisc.edu.
