June 2005 Archives

I would say that 99% of people on earth go to fewer concerts than Mrs. Dave and I. But when you record them for a hobby, there's a certain mania to justify your purchase of expensive recording equipment by using it as much as physically possible. In that regard, I know dozens of people who have justified their expenditures more than tenfold. Per year. I'm sure that if I went to as many shows as these people, I might just end up enjoying the single life again. Well, maybe enjoying isn't exactly the right word. There's something to be said for a quiet evening at home. But after the excitement of my birthday weekend, we traveled to my in-laws' place for a more or less relaxing weekend, we decided we'd had enough of the R&R thing, and plunged headlong into a musical binge the likes of which we hadn't done in a while. Let the justifying begin.

The first stop was something we'd known about for months before it was even announced, thanks to a little birdie who'd chirped in our ear to tell us to buy tickets. And so it was that we got all dressed up in our finest duds to descend upon Symphony Hall in Boston for two nights of Guster playing with the Boston Pops. Apparently the Pops had been interested in playing with a local band for a while. It's still not quite clear if Guster was their first choice or if they were a bit down on the list, but other than Aerosmith, it's hard to think of too many Boston-area bands that would be appropriate for symphonic accompaniment. And considering that a large percentage of Pops tickets are sold on a season-ticket basis, I somehow have trouble imagining that the tea-and-crumpets crowd would have been quite so thrilled to bear witness to Steven Tyler mounting his microphone stand and whipping his hair around on the stage while the band and the accompanists crashed their way through "Train Kept A-Rollin'". Though I'd have paid good money to see that - Aerosmith was one of my favorite bands growing up, and actually the first tape I bought was "Pump", followed by "Permanent Vacation". Still a band I want to see live someday.

But be that all as it may, Guster was the one who got the call, and sometime back around April or so, two members of the Pops flew out to Wisconsin to meet the band on the road and begin arrangements - both musical and logistical - to adapt the band's music for a 70-piece orchestra. The results were unquestionably majestic. Nearly tear-jerking in my wife's case. There were some who questioned the song choices - and the wisdom of choosing new material that the fandom was unfamiliar with, since they would be unable to compare it with the comparatively stripped-down live or album version - but just the fact that they were up on the stage of Boston's Symphony Hall, with its gold baroque flourishes and the oval "Beethoven" escutcheon topping it off, was a pride-inducing moment that made it all worthwhile. Even the songs we hadn't heard before - like "Empire State" - were sufficiently symphonized to make us more than excited for the upcoming album (coming out one of these years...thanks, record company!).

Night one was a bit spotty in places, which was understandable. Even more so once we found out that other than the two musicians they'd met in Wisconsin, and Keith Lockhart (the conductor), they'd only met the rest of the Pops that morning. Brian's drum set was a bit overwhelming in spots, despite it not even being played over the PA - it was only miked for their in-ear mix - and the orchestra came in a bit early/loud on some occasions. But night two was much looser and stronger - some more on-stage banter, some interaction between the band and symphony and crowd - and things just seemed a bit more together. Thanks to Brian's road journal entry after the fact, we found out that they may have more in store with the Pops for the future. I suppose we can only dream of an entire tour...that would make for an ENORMOUS amount of monetary justification...

Two nights later, we journeyed down to the waterfront town of Newport, Rhode Island, for our third show in five days. When we walked in the front door and realized it was a seated venue and that they'd be playing a full 90-minute set, we also realized that it was the first time we'd seen a regular, non-college, non-opening, full set from Guster since last February at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton. Since then it had been three college shows (including one in Newport!), three shows with Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright, and two more college shows. That's sixteen months between "normal" Guster gigs. Wow.

Normally for the end-of-tour shows, a band is tired from being on the road for so long, they're playing one random show that they tacked onto the end of the tour, and they're just looking to play it and get home. Guster falls into that trap sometimes, especially when it's a free outdoor gig or a college gig, but they brought their A-game to Newport - banter galore, good playing, lots of energy on-stage, rave reviews all around. As good as the show was, our drive home was nearly as entertaining - we laughed for a good mile or two when passed by a pair of guys in a convertible. At 12:30am. Wearing sombreros, flapping in the considerable breeze generated from driving down the highway at 70mph with the top down. Then came the drive-through experience at Wendy's - I don't think the guy was prepared to take quite as many orders from one car as he did, but he had a good sense of humor about it. Then as we pulled around, I completely blew past his window...oops. Slowly backing up, the cashier suddenly grimaced as an earsplittingly loud woman placed her order, bellowing over the loudspeaker. He turns to us, covers his mic with one hand, winces, and quietly exclaims "Daaamn!" We got our food and hightailed it out of there. Somehow, chicken tenders just don't taste as good any other time as they do at 1 in the morning...

I was my usual uncooperative self as far as suggesting presents for my 30th birthday, so I wasn't surprised to find myself not lavished with gifts on my actual birthday. However, when Mrs. Dave let slip that she'd tried - and failed - to get tickets to the Sox-Reds game for that night, I figured I'd swing into action. A quick tour of Craigslist yielded a few hits, and to convince them to sell ME their tickets, here's the email I crafted...

From: Dave
To: anon-78538735@craigslist.org
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:25:11 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: In the words of Estelle Getty as Sofia Petrillo...

Picture it. Needham. June, 1975. Looie Tiant on the mound. A young couple, relaxing in bed watching the game on TV. Looie always spins, but is spinning a beauty. The wife, soon to be a mother, goes into labor. The father tears himself away from the television to drive his beloved to the hospital. It's a boy! Two days later, on Father's Day no less, the kid comes home, and is promptly baptized as a member of Red Sox nation. Oh yes - the kid's birthday? June 13th. Friday, June 13th. How apropos for a fan of this star-crossed team. Four months later, the kid is asleep (against his own wishes) while a stocky catcher does his early morning foul-line hula.

Fast-forward thirty years. The kid had his heart set on a birthday weekend celebration in Chicago, but despite his family's best efforts, they couldn't get tickets, and the plans fell by the wayside. His wife tries to get tickets for the night of his birthday, but is outbid on eBay by a heartless eSniper. She reveals her plans to him with frustration, the morning of his birthday. And then his thoughts and his gaze turn to Craigslist.

The kid is me. The wife is a converted Yankees fan who has been fully educated on the season of her husband's birth. She firmly believes that Armbrister should have been called out, that Carbo's homer was the one that set it up, and that Dewey's catch saved the game. Help us out, would you?

--Dave

The email worked, we got two tickets right next to the center-field camera position, getting in just in time to see Pudge throw out the ceremonial first pitch (to Luis Tiant, no less!). The rest of the team even cooperated and whupped up on the Reds in what local wags were dubbing "Game 8".

After getting home and collapsing Saturday night - and to think I'd been mulling over the Edwin McCain/Jeffrey Gaines concert at the Paradise that night - we got up early Sunday morning to my parents pulling in the driveway to take us to day 2, phase 1. Now, originally, the plan had been for them to stay somewhere in the Boston area to facilitate them driving us all over creation (this was a surprise, remember, so they couldn't exactly tell us where to go), so they had made reservations in downtown Boston. Well, why stay in town when you can drive two hours home after a ridiculous day of covering God's green earth (or at least, greater Boston)? Yes, my parents opted to drive 100+ miles back home to Maine, arriving at some ungodly hour of the night, only to get up the next morning and drive down here. But it was for me, so of course, it was all worth it.

Day 2 phase 1 was breakfast at our friend Sinclair's in Cambridge. She has a little house off of Mass Ave in Cambridge, which hides a compact but absolutely spectacular garden in the backyard. Turns out my parents had some breakfast food in the trunk - some ridiculously decadent french toast - and when added to a coffee cake and a generous helping of fresh fruit, it was all I could do to...go back for seconds. Burp. We also had a few friends of the family there as well, and since the birthday celebration would not be extending to a third day, gifts were exchanged right then and there. Brother #1 gave me the entire second season of Sledge Hammer! (yes, the exclamation point is necessary, and if you remember the show - which lasted all of two seasons - you'll remember why), while Brother #2 gifted me the third season of Seinfeld. Said family friends gave me a copy of Johnny Damon's Idiot (which, two weeks after the fact, Mrs. Dave has both started AND finished, and I have barely cracked open).

On to phase 2. Back when the rentals were planning this weekend, they had asked for suggestions for activities. At the time the only one I could come up with was Blue Man Group - which Mrs. Dave and I had gone to see last fall but left midway through - but a month or so ago it suddenly occurred to me that as the Red Sox would be in Chicago, they would not be at Fenway, and thus Fenway would be at our disposal for a tour. And despite the many years of living in the Boston area - 13 before we moved to Maine, and 7 more since graduation - we had never seen the innards of Fenway (at least, not the air-conditioned innards). As it turns out, they'd had the same idea, and we made it into the city just in time for a 12:30 tour of the 93-year-old ballpark. Our tour guides led us up into the press boxes, into the .406 Club, out onto the left-field Monster seats (cementing our desire to some day sit up there) and back down to the left-field grandstand. Tours also occasionally include a walk on the warning track in left field, but they had just put down a life-threatening amount of fertilizer on the field, and we were informed that the fumes alone could kill a fully-grown walrus at 50 yards, so we had to steer clear. Fortunately, we'd already gotten to step onto the warning track - behind home plate, no less - when we got to Fenway early one night last summer for what turned out to be "Fan Appreciation Night". We'd forgotten our camera and couldn't get pictures as a result, but it gave me goosebumps stepping out onto the red gravelly dirt next to the visitors' dugout. But this time my mother had brought the camera, and after a few snapshots, we were ushered back out to Landsdowne Street and went on our way.
Last stop on the family birthday odyssey turned out to be the only thing I'd requested from the very beginning - the aforementioned Blue Man Group showing. Like I said, we'd had to leave early the last time, and as a result we missed a good bit of the show. I didn't realize quite how much we had missed, but for those of you who haven't seen it yet, I won't spoil it other than to say that my brother ended up being chosen for an audience participation piece (not the one mentioned in the previous link; there's another one) and that the hugely entertaining finale actually explains the paper-roll bandannas everyone wears during the show. From there it was a quick drive north and back home, hugs all around, and one last "I can't believe I have a child that's so OLD" joke before everyone was on their way. And then it was just 24 hours until I finally reached the end of my 30th year.

Happy birthday, happy birthday
Whoopee doo, whoopee doo
Hope your day is pleasant, open up your present
Just for you, just for you

So, yeah...I'm 30. It doesn't really feel all that different, except I have yet to really physically exert myself and then wake up the next morning to feel like a bulldozer did laps on my body. Thanks to Chris for the early warning.

I'm not really much of a birthday party guy, and my parents were never ones to throw me enormously elaborate parties - I guess that's why we get along so well. I think the biggest shindig they ever threw for me was taking me and a few friends to Fenway when I was like 8 or 9...there are pictures of six of us sitting in a row wearing Red Sox painter hats. I think we were somewhere in the upper grandstands in left field though I don't really remember - I just know that we were sitting in the blue seats, which is appropriate since an 8 or 9 year old is the only size person that can comfortably fit in one of those. It boggles the mind how much an outing like that would cost these days, since our seats usually cost us $25 per ass. Even if I only went with three friends, I think my brothers went as well, which means both my mother and father went...that's eight tickets, plus food (and despite a bag of popcorn being bigger than my head back then, of course nobody SHARES them).

At any rate, when Christmas rolled around last year, I got more or less the usual complement of presents from my parents, but the big one was left for last - a series of small boxes containing rolled-up strips of paper, which I then had to assemble. They spelled out a message announcing a family trip to be taken sometime this summer to Baltimore in honor of my 30th birthday, including lodging, tickets to a Sox game, and other entertainment in and about the general Baltimore area. Unbeknownst to my parents, Mrs. Dave and I had already made plans to go for our anniversary, and we started hatching more grandiose plans, centered around the Red Sox playing the Cubs at Wrigley Field for the first time ever, or the Red Sox playing the White Sox in late July as a fallback plan. Unfortunately, the White Sox series went on sale first...and sold out. Then the Cubs series went on sale...and sold out in about a sixteenth of a nanosecond.

Shit.

Fortunately, that still left my parents several months to plan a similar extravaganza, closer to home (after we got over the initial stage of blinking in shock that our plans had so rapidly been dashed). They asked for a few ideas of things we could do over a weekend in Boston, and my only submission (at first) was a return trip to see Blue Man Group - the missus and I had gone to the show last summer as a late anniversary gift, but had to leave halfway through as her mild malaise gave way to full-blown illness and discomfort. I later thought of a Fenway Park tour, which we had never done despite having lived in the Boston area for seven years now (seven years! Holy crap!), but since my mother does so enjoy planning events like this, I decided it would be more fun for her to not make any more suggestions and just let her enjoy the elaborate construction of a weekend birthday celebration.

A couple of days beforehand we were instructed to be ready by 10am on Saturday, and to be HUNGRY. Upon their arrival (at 9:30, no less) we were informed that Saturday consisted of six phases. Phase 1 was a visit of my old stomping grounds back in Needham - we went back to visit 92 Damon Road (amusing ourselves with the fact that the blinds in the basement appeared to be the same blinds that had been there when my parents bought the place 32 years ago), drove by Hillside Elementary (I was dismayed to see that Splinter City, our old behemoth of a wooden jungle gym, had gone the way of the triceratops, and was surprised to see the place was so SMALL), Pollard Middle School (of which I held very few pleasant memories) and Needham High School (of which I held very few memories, period, having left after a year when we moved to Maine). We drove by my first place of employment, the Needham Free Public Library, which was doubling in size. This was a bit surprising considering budget cuts were so severe that I was actually laid off there...yes, they couldn't afford my $4.63 an hour, 20 hours a week. Ouch.

On to phase 2 - lunch in the North End. We stopped in at Galleria Umberto Rosticceria, which sounds like a super fancy place, but is a real hole in the wall. However, it happens to be a hole in the wall that serves the most amazing Sicilian pizza known to man, for a paltry buck a slice. There are about eight items on the menu - pizza, three calzones, arancini and a couple other things. The owners basically whip up a batch of food, open at 11, and close when they run out, which is usually by around 2pm. The place couldn't be any more sparsely decorated, but people don't go there for the ambiance, they go for the pizza. The four of us bought two calzones and eight pieces of pizza, and there were no survivors. Great stuff.

Phase 2a consisted of walking off the effects of phase 2 rather than proceeding directly to phase 2b. Despite it being well north of 90 degrees and hazy, we walked all the way from the North End to the Common and the Public Gardens, passing by the swan boats and ending up at the building on Marlboro Street where my mother first lived when she moved to Boston. The place now houses a dentist's office. The options from there were to either walk back to the North End for phase 2b and car retrieval, or to take the T back. The T won out in the face of the suffocating heat, and we surfaced back near Hanover Street, quickly ducking into the one and only Maria's Pastry Shop, home of Boston's best cannoli. Mike's may be more famous with its ubiquitous boxes, but you haven't had a cannoli in Boston until you've had a shell filled right before your eyes from a pastry tube that's been chilling in the fridge next to the counter. The ricotta is still frosty and the shell is still crispy (that is, unless you got a chocolate shell, since you can't really tell underneath all that chocolatey goodness) - it was a welcome respite to sit in the well-air-conditioned confine's of Maria's and enjoy the cool sweetness of Boston's best. Phase 2b complete.

After extracting our car from betwixt the curb and a (temporarily) abandoned Coke truck, it was off to give ourselves some culture. And some Red Sox. But where in Boston can you do both at once? The Museum of Fine Arts, it turns out. They have a temporary exhibition right now featuring one of Norman Rockwell's paintings and an assortment of Red Sox memorabilia. We saw Ted Williams' old locker, some old World Series scorecards, programs and ticket stubs (including one from the 1975 World Series...almost as old as me!) and some new World Series stuff (Curt Schilling's ginormous shoe, Johnny Damon's batting glove, a signed baseball). And all of this in just one puny room of the MFA. We walked through most of the rest of the museum, but time was running short because our next appointment was at 4:30. One of the coolest non-Sox exhibits was a room of old musical instruments, some of them incredibly detailed in their carving work and inlays. We also got to see a large collection of original Paul Revere silver work and furniture as well as famous works by Sargent, Winslow Homer and more. Our tickets were good for a return visit within 10 days but life just got busy and we never did get around to it.

Then just as quickly as our visit had begun, it ended, and we were off to our 4:30 appointment, phase 4, and the Prudential Center. There are many things to do at the Prudential Center - some ridiculously expensive shopping and dining, a trip up to the observation deck at the top, or even a spin through the nicest Shaw's Supermarket you'll ever see, but as it turns out, we were there for a Boston Duck Tour. If you're not familiar with the Duck Tour concept, you basically take a tour of Boston and the environs in an amphibious vehicle, rolling through the North End and Charlestown before literally taking the plunge, splashing down into the Charles River and chugging around the water for a total of 80 minutes before getting back to your point of departure. Our ConDUCKtor was none other than the highest-ranking officer in the Duck Fleet - Admiral Amnesia. But just as his bio says, he didn't forget a thing, even managing to not take off a single rear-view mirror while negotiating some narrow streets in Charlestown. He even let a couple of five-year-olds drive...well, while we were in the water, anyway.

Upon returning to the Pru after our tour, the original plan had called for us to go for drinks at the Top Of The Hub as phase 5, but given the fact that it's just about the most üaut;berschwanky restaurant in Boston, and given the fact that we had sweated through our respective garments thanks to the üaut;berhigh temperatures and humidity, a restaurant of such schwankitude was probably the last place we should show up. Though such is their schwank that we might not have even stuck to their seats. So instead we opted to go to Champion's, the sports bar across the street that's part of the Marriott Copley, and the place I first met my friend Chris (before a Blues Traveler show at Northeastern in '96). Oh, and it just happened that the Red Sox were finishing up a game against the Cubs - so we at least got to see some of the series that had originally been the dream destination for the birthday weekend. And yea, joyous was the air conditioning that surrounded us. I drank the Coke I was served in about 2.3 seconds - well, actually, I more absorbed it through my pores in that stretch of time - and we watched a couple innings of an aborted Sox comeback, followed by the Belmont Stakes (horses running in circles is just about as fascinating as cars driving in circles).

Phase 6 was the final phase of the day, and involved an authentic Spanish dinner down on Newbury Street, at Tapeo. Interestingly enough, we'd already been to one place by the same name, in Oregon on our honeymoon. This was more authentically Spanish, looking like a downstairs bodega-type place - walking downstairs into a dimly-lit, heavily-decorated cluster of closely-packed tables. I had some delicious cordero asado (leg of lamb steak) but the best meal of the evening was my mother's pescado a la sal, literally translated as "fish in salt". Was it ever - the thing came encrusted in a half-inch-thick layer of salt that the waiter proceeded to break off the fish, which he then expertly skinned and filleted right in front of us. Quite the presentation, and quite the dinner, especially when accompanied by a tart, dry bottle of Spanish Rioja red wine. And so ended phase 6 and night 1 of the 30th birthday celebration.

So after an exciting adventure on the good side of the groinal area of luxury, we swing around to the other side, the seedy neighborhood that nobody frequents, where people roll up their windows and floor it - the ass of luxury.

I call it the ass of luxury because really, when you think about it, complaining about a house that you're living in for free is really a flyspeck compared to the other problems in the world. But dammit, 96% of blogs out there exist just so people can vent their petty frustrations to the world with a heaping dollop of half-witty sarcasm (for the record, the other 4% are a mix of horrendously bad poetry, would-be spammers, and people who speak Portuguese. Seriously, go to a blogspot blog sometime and hit "next" in the top navbar. You'll hit a blog in Portuguese within ten clicks, I guarantee it. I just tested it, and hit one in two).

The place Mrs. Dave and I have lived in for the past four years is hopelessly out of date from a fire code standpoint, but since it's a) on the outskirts of campus and b) only houses seven people, it was low on their list of buildings to fix up. It got bumped up this year because an inordinate proportion of incoming students made it impossible for them to be housed elsewhere, so they decided that in the process of converting one of the two apartments into more rooms, they'd do the fire code update thang as well. This, of course, involves relocating us while they knock every non-load-bearing wall out of the place, rip up and de-asbestos the floors, and finally get rid of the it-crawled-out-of-the-50's kitchen. Praise the Lord and pass the sledgehammer for that, I'll bash the crap out of it if it saves them some labor costs.

The locus of our relocation is apparently the only structure on campus lower on the renovation totem pole than our old building. I think there are dumpsters and phone booths with more creature comforts. There's no deadbolt on the front door; no doorbell either. There's dingy, pale-blue paint in what was supposed to be our bedroom, dull dark-green paint in what turned into our bedroom, several closets that are only deep enough for hanging up ties and belts, and a sponge-paint job in the kitchen. Toss in a basement straight out of The Silence of the Lambs, the lack of mowing for several months, and the fact that an enormous storm had felled a ton of leaves and branches on the driveway parking area postage stamp where our car is supposed to go - which had not been cleaned up - and you've got yourself a shitty little cottage.

Now, imagine that this cottage had been built for emaciated midgets, and you'll get an idea of what moving in was like. They took the front door off its hinges. They took both dining room doors off their hinges. They were unable to fit our boxspring upstairs, so that threw a huge wrench into our house layout plans - what was originally going to be our bedroom upstairs turned into the office/computer room, and vice versa (just as well, since it's fargin' hot up there). To get the computer desk into the upstairs office, they tried to take THAT door off but it banged into the molding above it (it's a peg-and-hole hinge, not the meshing bolt-and-cylinder hinge on most modern doors). Turns out that when they built the house, they installed doors and molding such that the door had to be opened 180 degrees to lift it off its hinges. Then they had the bright idea to built a closet inside the room which would PREVENT this door from being able to open thusly...and hence from being able to be lifted off its hinges. Fortunately, one of the movers had experienced this kind of dilemma before, and produced a screwdriver, whereupon he physically removed the hinge from the door, tipped it away from the molding, and then lifted it off the bottom hinge. We slid the desk in, he returned the door to its rightful place, and we may just leave the damn thing there when we move out in three months.

The other door-removing adventure consisted of getting our washer and dryer down into the basement. In order to get to the basement in this place, you have to go through the front foyer, through the dining room, and into our bedroom before you get to the basement staircase. They got the dryer in through the front door just fine. The dining room door had to be removed to get the dryer in there. But the doorway to our bedroom was just too damn small. We had gone this route because I had gone down into the basement ("...it places the lotion in the basket...") and seen a half-size door, barely big enough for one of the movers to get through, let alone oversized parcels. Since I knew this house had been inhabited previously by normal, laundry-doing folk, there HAD to be some way of getting down there, and I figured the staircase was the way to go. But because of a burned-out light bulb, I had failed to see the full-size door coming in the other side. ..after we had gone all the way through this adventure. Mystery solved, dryer backed out, everything else moved in without incident.

Tuesday was spent mostly unpacking the vitals and lamenting the fact that the weather was back up to above 90. And then we had torrential rains on Wednesday. Normally this isn't a problem, but they had also resurfaced the road in front of our house, which raised it just enough to be level with the gap in the curb corresponding with the concrete stairway down to our front walk. Yes, down, because the house is built on a slope. The water came gushing down our front walk, ran into our front steps, and then flowed along the foundation, trying to get the rest of the way down the hill. Instead, it flowed directly THROUGH our
foundation, and gushed into our basement, thoroughly soaking the back of our washer and dryer. This wasn't seeping down the walls, this was spraying through the cracks, water landing a good foot or so away from the wall, including some that flowed between the stones that make up the foundation, bringing a good deal of sediment and mortar with them, and a rather large gusher that was pouring down the back of our washer and dryer, and the back of a plank that served as a backboard for much of the electrical wiring for our washer and dryer; the water was actually entering the back of our dryer through where the wiring entered it at the top. I pulled the dryer away from the wall, unhooking the vent and unplugging the sucker, and only then did I realize I was standing in my bare feet, playing with electronics. Kids, don't try this at home.

I frantically called night maintenance, who showed up in knee-length galoshes, and they basically said that as long as our pump was working, it was ok, and that someone would be in the next day to hook everything back up. After that was done, we tried to do a load of laundry, only to find that enough sediment had gotten into the back of our dryer to get all over the drum belt, which resulted in there not being enough grab from the rubber to actually make the belt turn...so the motor wheel burned through the belt and snapped it. I'm hoping that's the only damage but the good thing about not owning your own place is that if stuff like that causes damage, we're covered. Again, it's ass, but it's the ass of luxury.

The general groinal area of luxury really has two sides, and never has that been more apparent in the past seven days. I think we're all familiar with one side of the midsection - the so-called "lap of luxury". I had the pleasure of experiencing said lap in the form of luxury box tickets at Fenway Park last week.

The luxury boxes are often called skyboxes, which is really a misnomer - the skyboxes are actually the level above the luxury boxes, and are really just seats under a roof. It wasn't until I got in there that I begun to understand why so many balls are dropped there - in order to get a foul ball into one of those boxes, it has to be a frickin' laser - your typical popup/fly ball will land up in the skyboxes, or won't reach the luxury box and instead fall down into the loge/grandstand below.

No, the luxury boxes are quite appropriately named, as they are quite luxurious. First, they are accessed through the .406 Club entrance, which is decked out nicely with a uniformed chap checking tickets and ushering you through a meticulously-cleaned foyer and up an escalator lined with black-and-white photos of past Red Sox glories - Ted Williams and teammates, the 1912 club, even a picture of a temporary field they built into a football stadium while Fenway was undergoing renovations. We then found our box and strolled on in.

Immediately, we were confronted with a table, upon which was laid two platters - one with fruit and one with crackers and cheese. To the left was a counter with chafing dishes built into it, which housed chicken fingers, buffalo wings, steak tips, hot dogs and other foodstuffs. There was a mini-fridge stocked with beer bottles, soda cans and a couple bottles of wine, and a long table with a huge tin of popcorn and some pretzels. Oh, and the table had two leather love seats flanking it, a huge leather sofa behind it, and a flat-screen, high-definition plasma screen mounted to the wall facing it. At the far end of the box is a counter with three or four stools at it, looking out over the seats themselves, which are outside, overlooking the field.

It was suggested that we bring binoculars with us, since we'd be fairly up above the action, but in truth, it was quite possibly the best view of the game we'd ever gotten. We usually sit in section 10, which is halfway between 1st base and Pesky's Pole (roughly even with canvas alley, where all the groundskeepers sit - draw a line up from there to the fifth row of the blue seats under the overhang, and that's us). The view is nice from there except you can't see the catcher/umpire depending on which seat you're in. We've had sixth-row seats behind the plate (courtesy of one of Mrs. Dave's plethora of bad-ass work contacts, who were our benefactors on this night as well) and while it was incredible to actually see the pitches break as they hurtled toward us (and to watch Dustin Hermanson injure himself for the rest of the season after relieving Tomo Ohka), the depth perception is really hard to judge. But from the luxury box, you're able to see everything, judge distances and angles, and just take in the whole field at once. It's a thing of beauty.

The game itself was frustrating at first - David Wells was pitching, Mrs. Dave's least favorite hefty lefty, and the Sox took an early lead only to give it back run by run - but we didn't much care as we munched on the free food (well, free as part of the price of admission, anyway) and shot the breeze with the other 12 people invited to the box. Later in the game the Sox loaded the bases before Johnny Damon unloaded them with a double to straightaway center, and then we all had Ben & Jerry's ice cream pops (mmm...Cherry Garcia...) and went home happy. With a little green Red Sox lunch bag and more ice cream pops inside it.

I'm not sure I'll be able to cope with our section 10 seats next time. Ah, who am I kidding, these are the World Champion Boston Red Sox, muhfuh!

Here's a thought...if you need to put your cell phone ringer on loud enough to be heard across the office, how about you actually ANSWER IT instead of letting it ring its obnoxious ring tone all the way through for 30 seconds?

Or better yet, turn it the fuck down before people go DEAF IN WYOMING.