The ragtop blues

I failed to mention that Chavez also managed to ruin my life completely by showing me the video of David Hasselhof singing “Hooked on a Feeling.” I’ll never be able think of the phrase ooga chaka ooga ooga ooga chaka in quite the same way again. Not that I ever did, but that’s neither here nor there.

This weekend is the final MHL, which we’re referring to as the Blowout. We have a lot of ideas for making it memorable, but we haven’t pinned any of them down yet. I’ll report after the fact. One team did question whether the competition would be up to their excruciatingly high standards, to which we responded with fart noises, so that answered that.

I have made live the NY State District Tournament website on the Goy. I know. You’re waiting sooooo patiently for me to comment on this. I will. I promise you, I will, but probably without too much vigor. I’m fairly out of interest on the subject by now, and have little to offer that hasn’t been offered in the past. But I understand the needs of the VCA to hear the latest invective, and far be if for me to ignore that demand.

Tonight is poker, for the first time in ages. I have a slight cold, but nothing short of the ague or St. Vitus dance would keep me away. (Although, come to think of it, I haven’t heard the phrase St. Vitus dance since I was a kid. My parents were always talking about it, so perhaps it was more popular back when they were young and hopping about. Or maybe they were referring to my dubious terpsichorean skills, which are, admittedly, minimal at best. Whatever.) I feel that this game is the first sign of spring, for some reason, although I almost killed myself on the residual ice on my driveway this morning, polished to an almost invisible fare-thee-well by a driving rain during the night. I want to be roaming the streets without a coat. I want to be a flaneur sipping absinthe on the boulevard. I want to feel the warmth of the sun and to put the top down on my car (not that it’s actually a convertible) and drive around listening to Beach Boys hits (like, for instance, “The Warmth of the Sun”). I want to scoot around the links in a golf cart, thinking to myself that if I can just get the next shot to within a mile of the pin I might, for once, not run the risk of being expelled from the course for sucking beyond the pale. I want to eat gelato in the West Village.

Soon. Soon. Soon.