Today was a perfect day for kickball

Donna Martin Graduate!!!

Dear Hutch,

Today was a perfect day for kickball in Los Angeles. The daily high was 80 degrees but there was a breeze. It was bright and sunny, so I wore my sombrero around Westwood. I miss kickball and its camaraderie.

I am about to get dressed for my graduate program's "prom", which will be at some posh trendy club in Hollywood. I assume I'll see some D-List celebrity while standing in line again! Joelski will not be there. He is schmoozing with the admitted Stern students in New York this weekend. I hope they don't give him a hard time for being from the Valley.

I thought about my options for Joel-stand ins. They included my original prom date and flanking myself with two members of Joel's Jew Crew. But then I realized that I could never "replace" Joel with a stand-in. It just wouldn't be the same.

Meanwhile, remember when I went to Tax Prom with Tim??? I had a great dress (actually it was my first try at a prom dress; my date's sister actually rejected it, so I had to try again and came up with the poofy pink number I will be wearing tonight). Tim actually picked me up at 1929 in a cab and he looked so sharp.

*Sigh. I wish Joelski were here tonight to do that with me. I think you guys would like each other, even if the only thing you have in common is me.

So basically I don't want to go to prom but I feel like I have to go to prom because what if someone does something that parallels or trumps what Donna Martin did at prom?? Remember "Donna Martin Graduate" chant on "90210"??

Hugs and kisses,
Sirinyay

New Hutch Team

Hello Shabbos readers,

I joined a new team this year called Turn Your Head and Cough in the Waka Adams Morgan division. I went Waka because Carter's Adams Morgan division had the Monday-Wednesday setup. I am not a fan of doing it on those nights. Our first game is tomorrow night and the new league has no idea who I am and of my DcKickball legacy.

I am going to retire from kickball after this season since I am going to business school in the fall. Unless there is an over 30 league that I can join after I get out.

Sirinyay, are you joining a team? I want to see many blog posts!

Hutch

Hutch and Sirinyay in January

Hello our kickball fans,

Sirinyay here. I'm seated next to the Hutchster. This is a joint blog. I miss kickball. I live in HellAY now and it kind of sucks. I mean, they have good Thai food there, and I am dating an awesome guy, but there is no kickball.

Hutch here. I am currently watching old kickball film of our opponents, running stairs, and working out my quads and hamstrings in my apartment gym. I would like to announce that this might be my last year in kickball this spring. My intention is to finish on top of the mountain in the flipcup tournament and the league championship. I will be inviting the top players from all previous teams to tryouts. Well, we have to go now and talk kickball strategy.

S again. There is some kickball in LA but it is not geographically desirable to my new digs in Westwood. But there is a coed soccer league in my urban planning program. I might go do that. It's not the same. It's not Hutch-KSE-Brian-Fred-Brightie-Crazy Allie-etc. I should bring intramural kickball to UCLA.

Hugs and Kisses,
S and H

Now I'm at Hobo Camp

Hey team:

So kickball continues its resurgence in popularity here at Nerd Camp.

[Actually I'm not at Nerd Camp; I'm now at what's called the Center for Talented Youth's Civic Leadership Institute. CLI is run by employees of the Civic Education Project, which is hosted at Center for Talented Development (similar org to CTY), and CTD is based out of Northwestern. I'm employed officially by CTD, but I'm at a location that has CTY lanyards and CTY rules and regulations, but not CTY culture... which initially worried me, but then we got around to today's game of kickball.

At kickball, this rising junior named Rishi kicks the ball into what appears to be left field. The first baseman (a kid named Charlie) literally runs RIGHT INTO a football player named Taylor's nuts. You could hear the SMACK. Taylor was not paying attention. He was later seen walking around with a big plastic supermarket bag, clutching his you know what. The bag like leaks. Girls regaled to me about how they'd rein in their snickers until after they got past him. Also he lain on his back like a sad, sad person. Rishi is pretty proud of himself for scoring that homerun, since everyone was paying attention to Taylor post:collision. (Also he's proud for causing that injury.) Taylor seemed to boast about the fact that kickball got violent.

We don't get to roll this shabbos

I just want to say it was a blast kickballing with the IDROS crowd this season. Thanks for convincing me to join, Brighton.
The last game was a bit anticlimactic, for those of you who weren't there. Hell, I almost didn't go, until Kat called me to guilt me into a Dayquil-hazed, zombie-like appearance. The opposing team took it too seriously for it to be a ton of fun. Wish I had been up to the task of attending the festivities afterward, but I had to go home and sleep.
That said, I think we did pretty damn well this season. Midseason we had some momentum going that I didn't see coming after our first couple of games. And second-place at the flip-cup tourney was a good deal of fun.
At the moment, I'm not planning on doing the fall league. I just started a new part-time job three nights a week, so I don't know if I want to add more to my schedule. If anyone wants to twist my arm, it's possible that I could be convinced otherwise, though.
That said, y'all should come out to the Red and the Black on H Street NE sometime. I'm working there on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, taking money for the shows upstairs. If you like to see good indie/heavy/poppy/alt local rock, it's the place to be.

We may not get to roll this coming shabbos, but we can certainly drink for dirt cheap at the party that night. See you guys at the end-o-season party on Saturday.

-Steve

The Flipcup Tournament...Belligerence at its Best

We finished 2nd in the flipcup tournament out of 16 teams from all of DCKickball's divisions. We played 5 best of 5 games and 2 best of 7 games and we filled up about 30% of the cup each game. With drinking between games as well, I would estimate that we each drank 15 beers to advance to the final game.

This is me hoisting the trophy after we won the first bracket.

Here is Steve smiling happily.

Here is an action shot.

Look at us. Pure dominance.

We played a really obnoxious team in the final who brought 4 extra players whose job was to yell and cheer. One of the dudes on their team also threw a beer on Carter for no reason after they won. This resulted in Carter calling him "a volcano who can't handle his liquor". This is what happens when you drink 15 beers in the middle of the day.

The Flipcup tournament is one of my favorite days of the year for this reason. Last year I drank 18 beers then decided to hang out with the white team at Millie and Als and take tequila shots. One of the guys on this team was named "Pork Chop" and we quickly befriended each other. We were so drunk we thought it would be fun to slap each other across the face for fun. I don't know what it is but flipcup really brings out the aggression in people. It's amusing to think back about how much of a debacle the day really is.

Instead of playing kickball, I have been at nerd camp

And my summer at nerd camp has been okay. I definitely miss my kickball team and speak of you guys often. On my first day back in LA, a Wednesday, I was on the phone constantly with Hutch to ensure that we had enough people to play. I'm at a site I have never been to in prior summers (four at LMU), which has been good in that I have seen a new place and mostly bad because I a) HATE CHANGE and b) really disliked the lack of organization manifest in the organization. But I did make a couple of friends (a bunch of frat boys from College of Wooster) and form an alliance with the few RAs who were deemed competent (a high compliment in the world of camp counseling).

With one of the frat boys, David, I brought Tom Ryan's favorite activity besides Robot Wars to Santa Cruz. Renamed Glue Stuff to DO and Sirinya (as opposed to Glue Stuff to Tom and Jason), the kids glued and blue-taped streamers, construction paper, twigs, plastic stuff and manboobs for 45 minutes. It was their favorite activity ever.


The original activity: