Wasted Saturday

Saturday was a complete waste of a day. It all started with the donuts.

At about 11 AM, Beth asked if I wanted some donuts for breakfast before the Sox game started. Of course I did, but I was already in pre-game mode and really didn't want to leave the house. I just turn into a hermit and have no desire to be "out with the people" when I get locked in like that. But we're talking about donuts, so I relented and agreed to make a quick trip with her to Shipley's, which is right down the street. We arrived there and their shelves were absolutely bare, although the sign indicates that they are open until 2 PM, so I'm not exactly sure what they plan to sell for the next three hours. "Come back tomorrow," implores the shopkeeper, as if they are purveyors of some exotic, hard-to-find item. No thanks, we'll go to Krispy Kreme. That trip was pretty uneventful, aside from Beth's fruitless attempt to purchase a gallon of milk there, ordering one at the drive through window. "Do they have gallons?" I asked. Before pulling off, they had forgotten our milk entirely. Beth reminded the girl at the window and then was handed the standard, small bottle of milk. Which is all I figured they had. But whatever.

Sadly, we were not out of the house long enough to kill the entire FOX Sports pre-game show. I'll save most of my venting about the FOX baseball broadcasts for subsequent posts, assuming that I'll be watching more of their horrific product in the weeks to follow. But they are awful. The Red Sox themselves weren't great either, and I could tell from the first inning that we were in trouble. When Tim Wakefield's knuckleball is on, it floats and dances through the strike zone, causing many missed swings by batters. That just wasn't happening. From the top of the first, the Yanks were getting good wood on the ball. The Sox battled back a couple of times but just couldn't break through against Randy Johnson when they needed to, and thus we're left with a shot at the wild card berth. We can wrap that up with a win on Sunday or a Cleveland loss. It won't be as satisfying as winning the division would have been, but I'll take it. And thankfully, Sunday's game will be on NESN. Last one of the season.

Game two of my personal double-header was the ASU-USC game. I had the mildest of hopes that the Devils could actually pull off an upset against the Trojan juggernaut, and obviously I really wanted to see the game. It featured the number one team in America, the two-time defending national champs, playing a top 20 opponent on the road...so, of course, the Little Rock ABC affiliate elected to show us Nebraska-Iowa State. Absurd. The move would be defensible if the choice involved even a single team with the slightest regional interest--any team from the SEC, for example. But Nebraska-Iowa State? Give me a break.

The only alternative is the Game Plan, an option through the satellite that allows users to purchase out of market games. We went with that. Beth did it, actually, in a very kind gesture, going to the computer and signing up for it without even telling me, knowing full well that I was already annoyed beyond belief by the Sox loss that was nearly over.

So we buy the game...and it doesn't come on. There are an array of channels featuring these pay-per-view contests and none of them have the ASU game on, even the single channel dedicated solely to that game. Oh, but two channels have the Nebraska game. I'm not even joking. And to make it worse, they even had different feeds of the game. For some inexplicable reason, the ABC affiliate here elects to show afternoon games on a slight tape delay if they get to them after they have started. This is a practice that used to be commonplace...about 20 years ago. Hello, 2005 called, and they say "hi." Are you kidding me? In the information age, exactly what is the point of, say, a 10-15 minute tape delay? It's absolutely insane. In this instance, it resulted in us getting the Nebraska game on ABC local with a feed that appeared about ten minutes behind the one we were getting on the ASU-USC channel on the dish.

The ASU game finally kicked in with about six minutes left in the first quarter. I won't rehash the game itself, as I'm sure anyone who cares at all already knows what happens. But I will add that we lost the game feed for no reason at all in the 4th quarter, and during the time it was out we missed the two teams exchanging touchdowns and two lead changes. So that wasn't worth watching at all. Of course, it kicked back in just in time for me to see the Devils completely melt down at the end of the 4th. After the game, Beth called DirecTV to bitch and she rightfully got the charges for the game refunded.

So that's how my Saturday went. Pleasing.