Fortunately for me, I guess, Steve hasn’t updated his site in several days and his review of Being Good still sits close to the top. If you’ve bounced here from Steve, please check out the Being Good page where you’ll find a link to an excerpt from the book.

The odd ping-pong match did take place. The story is this: a friend of Todd’s needed a percussion piece for his recital. It needed to be an original composition but the kid didn’t really have enough time to compose something so he was looking for a hook, a gimmick. After brainstorming with Todd, he decided to notate a ping-pong match for wood blocks. You know, da-dink-da-donk, da-dink-da-donk. He’d set up a table with a net and get a friend to help perform it. I guess taping a real match would add to the concept: “this piece was based on a match that took place between Todd A and Todd K on 3 April 2005.” Or something. Otherwise it’s just two guys with wood blocks going da-dink-da-donk.

So I went over to Todd’s yesterday afternoon. He set up a video camera and we started play. Unfortunately for the composer, we didn’t offer any really great play. Todd skunked me in the first game. A “skunk” in our house rules is when a player wins the game by winning the first 6 points. So we switch sides. This time we play to 21-19, I think. Maybe even 22-20. I win. It’s 1-1 in the series. Todd beat me in a game of 6 points and I had to play 42 points to beat him. We switch sides. I skunk Todd.

We’re not skunking each other with brilliant serves, just bad play on the part of the skunkee.

We switch sides for the second set. I skunk Todd. This is unprecedented. We haven’t played a skunk in months and we’ve just had three. Todd goes on to win the next two games and the set. We play a championship game to determine the winner since we’ve each won a set. I win 24-22.

We watched some of the video tape. The whole afternoon was pretty poor. I think the composer may have to create his own “points” that last longer than a serve and a missed return. Also, since we were at Todd’s house and not the University, we were free to shout the f-word when points went badly. I’d bet it would be frowned upon if the composer interrupted his piece to shout obscenities.

I received Hollywood, Interrupted in the mail yesterday. I love Half.com. I peeked inside but I didn’t have much time to read yesterday. And I want to get through Director’s Cut first.

I did catch most of the second episode of the American version of The Office. I still think it sucks. It’s just not as real and uncomfortable as its source material. It’s just another caricature of an office cubicle environment. But maybe that’s just me.

My girlfriend rented Mystic River last night. I didn’t watch it with her. I asked her how it was and she said, “It was stupid.”