Mostly I’m just jealous of any guy who can actually dance.
In my first real contribution to Linfatuation, here’s a Journal story about New Yorkers stuck without MSG access who are instead following the Knicks the old-fashioned way: by listening on the radio. I also went on Lunch Break to talk about radio’s revenge and Linsanity turning back time.
More than anything, though, this story reminded me of that great little Mad Men scene from “The Suitcase,” one of my favorite episodes, when Don and Peggy visit a dark and dingy bar and experience Ali knocking out Liston by hearing it. As it turns out, the radio call actually exists on YouTube. Of course it does.
I found my spirit animal at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show today. Also, I profiled a show dog named Oscar the Grouch, chatted with a Vegas oddsmaker about handicapping puppies and walked with Oscar from Murray Hill to the Garden early this morning for his Westminster debut. But mostly I just took pictures of wacky pooches. What a life!
Correspondence
Dear Ben: You are a gem if not a sacred messenger helping ski areas get the word about this No Cost Zero Carbon Snowdance Solution so some can avoid bank foreclosures apparently! So Snow Blessings to you! Thank your Creator, Mother Earth and Ben!
Some poor intern was kind enough to highlight parts of my story for Dana Carvey, a temporary Regis replacement on “Live With Kelly”—and he still thought it was about a rain dance in San Francisco. Oh, well. Party time!
Not long ago, my flight into Vail was diverted to Denver, as the conditions were so snowy that the plane couldn’t dip into the mountains and land safely. As it turned out, this had not been a problem for many weeks, and it was only a problem that day because of what had occurred a few hours earlier: a snow dance.
My front-page story for the Journal today details that very ceremony at Vail’s base and also mentions a few more recent snow dances in Park City and Lake Tahoe. In other words, even the most powerful ski resorts in the world are sometimes desperate enough to use that same tired-and-true method you used in middle school, when a blizzard was forecasted and you had a quiz the next day. Also, here’s some audio of me yapping about the snow dance on a podcast, some video of the snow dance, and more video of me talking about the snow dance, though not me snow dancing while talking about the snow dance.
You might ask if Eddie Box Jr., the Southern Ute who led the Vail snow dance, stuck around the mountain to shred himself. Actually, he wasn’t too interested in the white stuff. He hasn’t skied since he was a twentysomething and visited a mountain known as Purgatory. His last run is now named Lower Hades.
This weekend, thousands of Louisiana State fans will swarm New Orleans to watch the Tigers in Monday’s BCS Championship game and generally enjoy the closest thing to Mardi Gras outside February. But before, possibly after and most certainly during the contest, these celebrants will gather in the French Quarter and indulge in the one thing they’re better at than perhaps any other group of American sports fans: boozing. In other words, LSU fans make most other tailgating troupes look like traveling Baptist choirs. Put it this way: When LSU visited West Virginia, one of the only college stadiums that sells beer, Tigers fans were responsible for over $120,000 in beer sales that day. In no other game this season did Mountaineer Field even break $90,000. The tab might have been higher, too, if the venue didn’t run out of cold Bud Light at halftime.
So here’s my story about all this in the Journal, naturally.
Plus, a deleted scene! In 2003, LSU traveled to Tucson for a matchup with Arizona, and it was followed by parties in purple and gold. One business-school executive organized a trip for 40 couples with the concierge-like assistance of his counterpart at Arizona. About a month after the game—an LSU win, of course—the Arizona professor received a call with a bit of surprising news. He was being honored by the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau for ushering in so much commerce to the area. He still keeps the plaque in his office to this day.
