To start off, I wanted to talk a little about recent sports. I will save the World Series picks and stats stuff for the sports section, but has anyone else noticed that new slow motion camera they have been using?
The "Albert Pujols' Junk Cam," as we like to call it. They use this camera to show batters swinging at pitches in incredible slow motion. It's a good thing baseball players wear cups, or else this camera would be a disgusting waste of money.
Also, another chapter was added in the Mike Tyson saga. Tyson went on record saying that in his upcoming boxing tour, he would like to fight a girl. When asked if he was joking about fighting women, Tyson said, "I'm very serious." I, for one, cannot wait. If you don't remember, Tyson was one of the best boxers of all time. Now he is so much crazier than before and washed up; I don't even know who would win in a fight between him and a woman. I just hope it's a professional female boxer and not some waitress. And you know that Tyson would not hold back at all.
Tyson has gotten to the point that he is probably embarrassing to be around. What's left of his entourage is either too loyal, scared, or dependant to run away. I bet when they are all in a public place, like at a club or a mall or something (I have no idea where Tyson would hang out these days), and he says something insane, his buddies do that "look away and pretend you don't know him," or "yeah, I hang out with him, but that doesn't mean I like him" thing, when you look away and kind of scratch the back of your neck.
Mike Tyson has become a "That Guy." Everyone knows a That Guy. It's unavoidable. Usually, That Guy's voice rises uncontrollably when he gets excited, he makes Asian jokes in front of Chinese people, black jokes in front of the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, and just generally makes you cringe during social gatherings. You never know when he might strike. It usually does not go past the innocence of a joke, but you really just don't want to see him get his ass kicked.
Last Thursday was Greg's 21st birthday, so his girlfriend decided to throw a party at our house (Louise, I told you that you would be in an article). That Guy was on his fourth game of Beirut, when he suddenly morphed from housemate, to "Cool Ethan," a That Guy pseudonym.
During the transformation, three of us stood around the keg, watching in anticipation of what antics were to come. Stupid comment after stupid comment quickly led us to the invention of a little game - every time Cool Ethan did something that annoyed us, we wanted to do some sort of motion that would tip each other off and leave Ethan unsuspecting. A beer chug was too clich?©d, and we aren't pledging, a simple ear pull or crotch grab would have been too subtle. So we decided on doing a little jig - think John Travolta dancing with Uma Thurman in Jack Rabbit Slims from "Pulp Fiction."
Soon, Juan and I were up at the 'ruit table playing none other than Ethan. The twists started slowly, but got more and more frequent as he hit more and more cups. Pretty soon, we were dancing and laughing more than we were playing.
As the party went on, more and more people picked up on this game of ours. It was not long before the whole party was shaking and jiving. Word was spreading from one person to another about our mean joke. Late in the night, everyone who was left in the house was hanging out in the living room. Ethan made his way up the stairs and, without hesitation, said something ridiculous and about a thousand decibels too loud. Immediately, without any coordination or signals, everyone in the house stood up and starting dancing. It was quite a scene. Imagine a room full of people spontaneously standing up and doing the twist.
Everyone instantaneously burst out laughing. But just when we thought things could not be any better, Cool Ethan jumped into the center of the room and danced his little heart out.
This was too much. About all of the guys lost control. We were rolling on the floor.
I have never seen my friends laugh as hard as they did that night. The girls left the room, appalled at our insensitivity. Ethan, feeling very good about himself now, laughed with us, and then kept on dancing. I don't think I have seen anything funnier in my life. Greg was about to die - he had not taken a breath in about five minutes. Someone was rolling around under the coffee table, another standing up, then falling over, then up, then down, all the while laughing uncontrollably.
Ethan did this the rest of the night, so we kept laughing the rest of the night. It was an interesting cycle. Ethan had no idea what was going on; he was totally clueless. And he was more into it than we were. It's going to be a hard moment to top.
The moral of this story is to please be considerate of others. Also, we're a-holes.
Dan Tovrov is a junior majoring in English. You can reach him at daniel.tovrov@tufts.edu.
