Ah, yes, November 1987. New Coke. Iran Contra. The Yeastie Boys.

The Yeastie Boys was what we called our intramural College Bowl team at Rice University: David Nathan, me, Brian Tagtmeier, George Webb, and our captain, Mike Yanochik. We five Weissmen sliced through our competition on the way to the intramural finals. At stake was the honour of representing Rice in the regional championship.

The late Dr. Bill Wilson was a long-time resident associate at Wiess, and his family is still going through his archives. One of the treasures that recently turned up was video of the Rice championship game in November 1987. Here it is.

Spectators and celebrants include Kyle Giacco, Tania Min, Bill Davis, and Joan Rea, Wiess College master at the time. Dr. Bill is behind the camera.

You’ll note that I was riding the pine for this match.

Doug Elliott, the star of our opponents, would join the Yeastie Boys as we scorched all opposition in the spring and earned a date at the national championships in Chicago in May or June 1988. The details are fuzzy. We were eliminated quickly and spent the rest of the weekend on alcohol, pizza, and Astros baseball in Wrigley.

The video brought some things to mind. Did I really have a mullet? Why was I wearing glasses instead of my contact lenses? Gordon Sumner, anyone? C’mon! (I bet I knew that one even then.) Speaking of then – holy crap, we were once smart and fast and thin and sported much more hair.

Today, it’s out-and-out barking.

One of the Others left the dog outside yesterday morning while I slept. Crash wouldn’t shut up, apparently. Our octogenarian neighbour called but I didn’t hear the phone. Sometime after that, she crept into our backyard and put the dog in our house.

Can you blame her?

I just gave Crash another 1 mg of Dilaudid. Let’s see if I can salvage the afternoon.