Thankful '05

• my fiancée
• the Washington Nationals
• frequent-flyer miles
• ego-puncturing losses to remind us: “win or lose, we’ll greet you with a glad returning / You’re the pride of VPI…”
• mart-lifting the C3
• the Yudites (even Jeff G. and DCNAB)
• road games with the Hokie Nation
• an office across the street from Metro: 45 minutes from desk to RFK
• or an office next door to Best Buy, with an easy shortcut to the back lot of Tysons
• my first-baseman’s stretch to cover a Db octave in Maple Leaf Rag
• Volkswagen diesel
• Hurricanes 8, Flyers 6: my first in-person Canes win ever
• Seth Greenberg and the joy of being the underdog
• crazy weekend travel stunts
• the new NHL (and XM 204 to follow it by)
• have I mentioned my fiancée?

...And Those Maryland Fans

For a recent alumnus, I’m a fairly well-traveled Hokie football fan. I’ve been to UVa three times. I’ve been to Miami twice, including 2004 with an ACC championship and Sugar Bowl berth on the line. In the Big East days, I went to Pittsburgh twice. In 2002, I even went to Western Michigan, where I had to fend off a drunk student taking a run at me from Frat Row as I walked to the game. I’ve been to four different bowl games, partying with hordes of Auburn, Bama and FSU fans. But never before have I experienced such a poisonous football atmosphere, and been subjected to such vicious personal treatment, as happened Thursday night at Maryland.

Outside the stadium wasn’t bad; we were waved into the parking deck adjoining the Comcast Center, and walked through the Hokie-dominated Comcast lot before turning toward the stadium. My friend and I got a couple of snide comments and some drunken booing from Maryland fans, but that’s normal and acceptable. When you’ve just brought a #3 football team and at least 8,000 road fans onto campus, you should expect mild harassment within the bounds of civilized behavior.

Inside the stadium, though, those bounds were crossed with impunity. We reached our seats in the third deck at about 5:45 PM; a smattering of other fans, mostly Hokies, had already entered as well, but the only area of the stadium heavily populated was the student section. The cheers that rose from that section started with the obscene and migrated toward the sexually disgusting. At one point, a spirit squad came onto the field to lead cheers, joined by someone wearing a red #99 football jersey. During this stretch, the spirit squad led a group of four male students with the F word spelled out on their backs onto the field; they were cheered, then returned to their seats. During this rally, the Hokie team had entered the field to practice; as the VT offense huddled in one corner of the end zone, the students pelted the players with debris as #99 waved and yelled encouragement.

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Callouts and Conspiracies

Today is a momentous day in BTN history. (Actually, last Thursday was; I just didn’t notice until lunch today.) I have now received my first-ever blog calling-out, wherein someone I don’t know devotes an entire post toward drawing my attention. So, congratulations, LawDawg; you have ascended the heights above such BTN luminaries as Tina the American Idol fan, and far surpassed Fanblogs’s legions of WVU-supporting morons, and gotten me to respond in a full post.

And perhaps I should be afraid, being called out by a law student with an unusual interest in (a) infectious diseases and (b) my current town of residence. Unfortunately for LD, though, I moved to Reston last fall, so I wasn’t around for the 1989 Ebola outbreak. And I was 9 years old anyway, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed unless everybody started wearing surgical masks or something. Sorry to disappoint. As for potential causes of death in Reston today, I’m more worried about speeding dot-commers in Range Rovers than killer monkey viruses.

But there’s one thing we’re all missing here. According to Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, I know), the infected monkey house was closed and converted to — get this — a day care center. And none of the kiddies have even gotten sick that we know of. A hop, skip, and a conspiracy-minded jump later, one might wonder: is someone using an unassuming suburban preschool to create legions of Ebola-resistant supertoddlers to take over the world? We are awfully close to DC, after all.

You might say that I have no proof they are. But can you prove they’re not?

Church, religion, and a whipping Post

I’ve got a brief philosophical foray to spin out of a sports/religion story, so bear with me if you will. (Or you could just click away somewhere else — after all, it’s not like I’ll know.)

Washington Nationals OF Ryan Church has gotten into hot water following a remark quoted in a Washington Post story Sunday on the role of chaplains in Major League Baseball. Nats chaplain Jon Moeller (who himself has been suspended from his part-time duties) is quoted secondhand by Church as stating that non-Christians will go to hell, with Church expressing his shock that, according to Moeller, his Jewish ex-girlfriend would be heading south after death.

To get the theology out of the way: yes, Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that no man would go to the Father but by him (John 14:5-6). This can be read to support Moeller. I hesitate to make statements like Moeller’s, though, because we as sinners are not supposed to judge lest we also be judged (Matthew 7:1). Using the first citation to state conclusively that someone is going to hell reads as judgment of that someone to me. Yes, that’s a fine distinction; that’s why theologians have been in business for two thousand years. (And we haven’t even discussed where God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people plays into this.)

Randoms On My Mind

Virginia Tech ripped us off on football ticket shipping this year. For the past two seasons, tickets had been delivered FedEx 2-Day Air: quick to arrive, and easy to pick up after hours for those of us with jobs. This year, they charged us the same $15 for shipping, but chose UPS Ground instead and took a profit on the remainder of the money we paid. Result: tickets arrive 4 days later, and after their driver misses you at 11 AM, you have to throw a small tantrum over the phone to get them to take it off the truck at the depot so you can pick it up that night. If you think I’ve got experience with this, you’re right!

Disappointing news of the day: [Daryl][http://d103.com/] is calling it quits at D103.com as of the end of this month. I understand completely his not having the time to make it as good as he wants it to, as I’ve felt that way about BTN several times in the past year. A big complication for him is that, as a professional writer, a half-heartedly written blog could damage his professional reputation. For me, it’s simply a reflection of my priorities moving elsewhere; unless I do something deliberately stupid to poison my name on a Google search or start talking about work, the embarrassment of a poor effort is confined to the five or six of you that read regularly despite my slacking.

Speaking of other priorities, of the ten Nationals games I’ve attended since the beginning of June, the mediocre-at-best Tony Armas Jr. started 5 of them, including four in a row. Guess who’s starting tomorrow night?

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