winning for the team

Kind of a sad tale on old Bobby Vee.  Had that historic break coming in on that historic plane crash, but then just turned out to be one of those teen idol types.  Remember the teen idol era that went roughly between The King and the Beatles, the dark age of rock and roll?  Apparently that tie with Scratchy Bobby was a real thing,not just a one line throwaway, as Scatchy Bobby said it numerous times,and, if wiki is to be believed, and if not we are in deep doo doo here at the Institute, are we not, even played briefly in Bobby Vee's band under the name of Gunnn or something.

That microsoft story sounds fishy to me.  Basically I wonder how they contacted you if your computer was down.  I used to get these phone calls from these guys with heavy Asian Indian accents and a lot of noise in the background saying that they were monitoring my computer and had found some problem with it and wanted me to go to some website so they could fix it, at which point I got suspicious and asked for their number so I could call them back, at which point they hung up.


Let me retell the tale of the three amigos.  It was a fourth or fifth grade class, that intermediate stage when kids are transitioning between cute little dickens and sullen thugs.  These three boys were kind of troublemakers, but not too bad, kind of amusing, reminded me of myself at that young age.  And I remembered a game one of my teachers at Tonti pulled on my class when I was about that age.  She divided the class into two groups, left and right I think.  And whichever side answered a question first, that side got five points or something.  I remember thinking at the time that the game was stupid, but also noticing that most of the class took it hook line and sinker.

And so did this class, and I had them in the palm of my grizzled substitute teacher hand.  But not quite the three amigos, they were talking too loudly among themselves and to put a stop to that I fined their team five points.  At first it seemed to work, the class gasped and their teammates frowned at them.  But their little brains were ticking, and when they were at it again, I threatened to fine their team ten points, and then one of them said why not twenty, and another said fifty, and then I heard murmurs of what do we get if we win this game.  Busted.  I quickly moved on to something else.

But this is kind of what I was getting on with about fandom.  It's this very strong, but irrational force which I think has been deeply embedded in our genes in our long crawl from the watery depths to Wrigley Field.  I think there is something there.  I wonder if Beagle's daughter was ever in like the high school swim team, and if he rooted for her.