When Snowball Fights Turn Epic

With the exception of my upcoming story this spring/summer, I generally keep my personal stories to a minimum on my blog. But when a night as epic as last night occurs, it's guaranteed to get a post on here. If you look at my tweet bar, you may notice that I am talking about an epic snowball fight. Well, this is the story. Naturally, it's not going to be the same or have the same feel watching it as you did experiencing it, but believe me it was one of the most awesome nights ever.

So here's my story. I was at the library last night working on a project for a class (and intermittently tweeting as a means of procrastination). The library closes at 12, so I left at 11:15 as it was snowing hard and the snow was sticking and I wanted to get out of there before it got any worse. As I am walking down to my dorm building, a girl in the snow falls right behind me. Naturally, whenever you hear a "WHOA!" out of nowhere, your initial reaction is to be startled and to turn and stare. Well, I turn around, realize what happened, say hi and ask if she's okay. She gets up with help with her friends but as she is getting up, she randomly pelts me with a snowball. I was not aware of what was going on 30 yards down the way (visibility was not great and the wind made the outdoor acoustics not particularly strong), and while I am not sure if she ever was, little did I know how much of a sign of things to come it was.

I continue walking. 15 yards later, I got pelted with another snowball out of nowhere. I still have not figured out where it came from of who threw it. Anyway, I walk down some steps, and I see it. A giant snowball fight between my dorm and the dorm across the way. Awesome.

I find some of my friends behind a poll in the building and ask what on earth is going on and how did it start and you know, the normal for walking into that situation (I later found out that 6 guys, some of whom I know, on the floor below me went out in their boxers and apparently a snowball or 2 got thrown and it escalated from there). I go up to my room, put my backpack away and join in on the fun.

Now I don't have a really great arm nor do I have great accuracy so my participation was much limited, but between 11:30 PM and 12:30 AM last night, some of the events that took place included the 2 dorms throwing snowballs back and forth at each other, our dorm getting completely pelted with snowballs (photos below), me getting knocked upside the head with a snowball (it will be 2 weeks before I can play in the NFL again), people from another dorm, Elwell, the largest dorm on campus, coming up and challenging us whereby my dorm and Luzerne (the dorm we were fighting) teaming up to throw snow balls at them only to chase them away with snowballs, the bitch GHD in our dorm calling the police (we think it was her at least; she absolutely would do it), one police car pulling up to the side of the fight only for us good college kids to throw snowballs at the police car (no need to worry, I did not physically throw a ball at the police, although I certainly laughed my ass off at it happening), and a quick retreat inside after that only for the GHD to threaten to throw someone in their underwear outside and lock them out there if they were not quiet.


At this point, I had been out there for an hour and my hands were completely numb and purple, so I went into a bathroom and ran them underwater for a good while to get the feeling back. I decided to go upstairs and watch the rest of the fight from up there with some friends as the police knew about us (and believe me, we were making our fair share of noise in the Bloomsburg night) and with my luck, I would have done something stupid at the wrong time that would have ended up with me in handcuffs. As I watched, Elwell then came back, started throwing snowballs like no tomorrow and everyone from my dorm and Luzerne retreated up to our Academic Quad with the people from Elwell chasing them. At that point, all the action in front of our dorm is over and I decide to go downstairs and check out the damage to our building. Snowballs were stuck to it everywhere, it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The glass doors were covered in white snow and water as was many of the bricks. Anyway, I decide, you know what, what the heck, I am going to go back out there on the Quad and join back in the fun. After all, when you are going to see and experience anything like this again. So as I'm going up there, I'm about to join in the fight and all of a sudden the police make another pass. Now nothing harmful was going on, but at the same time, I was not going to risk my entire future career over a snowball fight (no matter how epic it was). I decide to turn around and call it a night. Besides, I was tired and needed to wake up early today to make a phone call only to have the person that I needed to reach not answer the phone.

Regardless, here are some photos of the snowball fight between the 2 dorms courtesy of Facebook with the video of the fight on the Quad at the very bottom. Not only was it an epic night time snowball fight, but the lighting there really was perfect for such an occasion as you will see.

While not taken by me, this is a similar image to what I saw when I came from the library.

Luzerne pictured here. Again, the lighting was perfect for an epic night.

Another shot of Luzerne

A good shot of the fight

Chasing someone.....not sure if my friend took this as we chased Elwell or the po po car.

My dorm covered with snowballs

And now, here is a 3-minute video of the 500-1,000 people free-for-all that later on occured on the quad!



Simply epic.

Update: It also appears as if CNN thinks that our snowball fight was epic as well. So much so that they featured the snowball fight on their iReport!!! Check it out!

Okay, so it's the same video I linked to above and they only have a paragraph of text, but anytime your school ends up on CNN and police spraying mace on the face of innocent students is NOT involved, you know it's going to get a linked here.

As much as I hate to say this, I will actually be perusing various news shows tonight, both local and national, to see if anyone mentions us at all. I mean really, can you honestly say that you have ever seen a snowball fight quite like this one?

'Twas A Year Ago Today....

I know that some of you have better things to do than read about a personal story about my life, but seeing as a year ago today was one of the biggest nights of my life, I figured why not have a blog post about it. And if you don't want to read a post about me that has nothing to do with sports, you can scroll down and read all you want about Hank and Kendra and "stare" at that photo of Kendra for hours on end which I know you are all doing or did anyway. ;-)

But back to the point. It was one year ago today, that I graduated high school! Now aside from the fact that it was my high school graduation, things could not have been more unpredictable or crazy that day. And almost all of it centered around the weather.

The weather leading up to the days leading up to the day of my graduation can be described with 2 words: heat wave. I mean, the heat we had here during the 4 or 5 days leading up to the day I graduated was hot, hot, hot and I'm pretty sure that we set a bunch of record highs through that period. But regardless, I'm talking about hazy sunshine with temperatures in the upper 90s. And for someone like me who prefers the cooler temperatures, it was not a fun time. Top that with the outdoor graduation rehearsals and it was the heat wave from hell and then some. So we get to Tuesday, June 10, 2008 and guess what, it was the hottest day of the bunch.

We had our last graduation rehearsal at around 9 in the morning and the temperature was already encroaching 90 by then. Again, these are outdoor rehearsals so we were all dying and keep in mind it's a graduation rehearsal so we sat out there for what had to have been 1.5 to 2 hours just going over everything for graduation and with the sun shining right on top of us, it was not a pleasant experience. So the rehearsal eventually ends and the graduation, set to take place outdoors at our football stadium, was set to begin at 6 PM.

We had been watching the weather in advance, practically monitoring it hour-by-hour, so we knew that there was a chance of a strong, heat wave ending thunderstorm set to come that night. And something else you should know about me, I DON'T LIKE THUNDERSTORMS! So yeah, it's a 98 degree today that's going to end with an electrical storm right around the time of graduation. Great! Now, if the principal felt that the weather was going to be a hinderance and a problem, she would move the graduation inside. With the impedning thunderstorm at around the same time that we were set to receive our diplomas, we felt that there was no way it would be held outside. Guess what? The Greatness That Is Our Principal came through and the graduation would be held outdoors! Great......it's 98 degrees, I'm in a fucking dress shirt and a graduation robe that is as uncomfortable as hell, and there's a t-storm looming on our graduation. She would make a concession, though. We could wear a short-sleeved button down shirt so as not to die in the heat! And I didn't have one! But even if I did, though, that robe sticking right to my skin was not a pretty thought. So we start at the scheduled time and the sun is still out.

However, you can see the clouds looming on us. We start the commencement and as we walk out during Pomp And Circumstance, the sun goes away into the clouds. You could see them in the distance and while they seemed so close, at the same time, they were so far away. How much time did we have before the lightning storm of the year? We were not sure. But we would soon find out. The ceremony started out as planned and whether or not any of the speeches were cut short, we will never know. But everything went as rehearsed (we did not hear the speeches before this). You could see the clouds gaining on us and looming ever the more over us, but it seemed like with the pace things were going, we might just get this in on time. Maybe. There's a chance.

Then we started handing out the diplomas. Things started out well for this. Everyone had remained surprisingly calm through the first part of this. And thankfully so.

"Justin Joseph Feinberg."

I got up and received my diploma. Dark clouds looming over us, but still no thunder, lightning, or rain, and the crowd is still calm. But the clouds move in more and more, they are darker. And all of a sudden BANG!!! A lightning bolt! The crowd is getting antsy. Someone launches up an inflattable beach ball! And it starts to get bounced around the crowd. And now another one! And an inflattable monkey! Well at I did not have this nonsense going on when I received my diploma. We're nearing the end of the diplomas, but the lightning is becoming more and more frequent. And in one of the most haunting images I've ever seen, as I randomly turned my head to look at some of the parents sitting on the bleachers, a lightning bolt strikes seemingly right behind them. I'll never forget that site.....

And the wind! The wind has gradually picked up. And at this point I've completely forgotten about the fact that it is a humid sauna outside, I'm worried about getting out of the staduim and into my dad's car. We somehow finish through everyone's diploma. And now it's up to the class president to give his final address. There is noise everwhere and I can't hear. Great, this is the one speech we are suppesed to pay extra attention to as this is the time we are supposed to rotate our tassels and flip our hat into the air. Suffice to say that I was not the only one that could not hear. And in perhaps one of the most bizarre moments ever in any graduation, people just start randomly flipping their hat as they get taken away by the wind! Nobody can hear (or at least I couldn't and aside from maybe the people in the very front, I can't imagine who could), what else were we to do! And then more people do it including myself. And then pretty much everyone follows in what had to be the worstly coordinated cap toss ever. And perhaps the most ugly one as they were all taken miles down the road by the wind.

At this point, instead of the casual exit to the band, we all just got up and started going in different directions! Some embraced the weather as the winds of change most definitley were blowing through, others like me, did whatever we could to hightail it out of there because with my luck, whenever there's a storm and I'm stuck outside in one, I feel that there is a lightning bolt with my name on it waiting to strike me down. At this point my memory is a bit blank, how I found my Dad and family I have no earthly idea, but somehow I did and we started racing out of there. The rain miraculously has not began falling, but the lightning, thunder, and wind were in full force and then some. Despite the fact that I am about the slowest runner on the earth for someone my size and stature, I somehow manage a full-fledge sprint with my family to head for the car and get out of there. I see my friend along the way and asks if he has a ride or not as I pass him running (even though I later remembered that he previously told me that he did) And miraculously, still no rain! We get in the car and are one of the first cars out of there. I arrive home and again, the rain has not started out! We managed to get out of there without being rained on! We never got to sing the alma mater, the cap-tossing was a complete clusterfuck, but we got out of the rain! 5-minutes after we got home......down came the rain! And while the rain would be on and off, the lightning and thunder would persist well into the night, as I recall that I still heard lightning and saw thunder at around 11 PM-midnight that evening.

Yep, and through it all, that will always be the greatest night of my life. 6/10/08. Methacton High School Class of 2008. Never forget.
(Ed. note: I am not in this picture. This is screenshot from our graduation DVD is taken from the girls side but I use it because it has the best shot of the storm. Us guys had green caps and gowns, for anyone that cares).

The Eagles Make Up For An Epic Flyers Meltdown

Well, the Flyers may have blown a 3 goal lead to lose 5-3 and be eliminated from the playoffs, but the Eagles had an all right draft day, if I don't say so myself. I think that I was the only one in our live blog that liked the pick of Jeremy Maclin (although Pettigrew would have been a tad better) and the Eagles need a running back and LeSean "Shady" McCoy is not bad at all. I shall avoid discussing the former team mentioned in this post, but shall discuss the Eagles draft picks.

Maclin is a very similar to DeSean Jackson, which may not be such a bad thing for them. Consider the success that Jackson had as a rookie last year. If Jackson improves and Maclin is as good as Jackson, then the Eagles have exactly what they always wanted. You can have the speedsters Jackson and Maclin on the outside and you can put Curtis in the slot, a position where he is probably a little bit more comfortable. With Reggie Brown, Jason Avant and Hank Baskett as the 4th and 5th and 6th receivers, that is not a bad combo at all (although I would not be surprised if Reggie Brown is cut). Wide receiver should no longer be a concern for the Eagles and McNabb has more of what he wants. Maclin has breakaway speed and can be very dangerous with the yards after the catch.

And in the 2nd round, the Eagles went with the PA product, LeSean "Shady" McCoy who went to high school at Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg, college at Pitt, and now has been drafted by the Eagles. This kid has the potential to be lightning in a bottle if given the opportunity and will definitley fare well by having Brian Westbrook above him. I'd expect to see Shady get a lot of carries this year, assuming he avoids injury. I can see him as a definite upgrade to Correll Buckhalter, who I never saw as anything special (other than his toughness and resilance to battle back from 3 season-ending knee injuries in 4 years and still be playing in the league today).

Join me tomorrow as I hilariously attempt to live blog the 2nd day of the draft. If I'm lucky, my analysis and insight might be slightly better than that of a 3-year old's on this day, but alas, I've always considered myself more of the PbP type anyway (and if you've followed my live blogs closely both using Blogger and CiL, you'll have noticed I always go heavy on the PbP to cover up the spots where I'm not exactly a brillant analyst or strategist).

Meanwhile, to end the day in Phillies sports, the Phils have beaten the Marlins yet again, 6-4 in 10 innings and all of their wins this season have been of the comeback variety, including this one, where they trailed 4-3 in the top of the ninth before tying it in that inning.

Okay, 2 things on the Flyers (I was not planning on doing this), but first of all, while time will tell whether a conference quarterfinal game will qualify as one of those infamous Philly moments, but blowing a 3-goal lead in game 6 to lose the series is definitley one of those Philly moments and it was depressing to see to say the least. But alas, cheering me up a bit in some odd fashion was that I was at arguably one of the greatest, disappointing, heartbreaking, infamous, and memorable games in Flyers history (and no, it was not today). In the 2000 playoffs (yes, the year of the 5 OT game) the Flyers were up 3 games to 1 on the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference Finals with home ice advantage. The Flyers proceeded to lose the next 2 games setting up Game 7 in Philadelphia. And for those that don't know, are too young to know, or just don't remember, this was the game that killed every Flyers fan a little bit. The Devils won the game 2-1, thus completing the choke job, but it was Eric Lindros' last game as a Flyer and this is the moment that is forever embedded into every Flyers fans skull as one, if not, the most infamous moment in their franchise history. And again, I was there that day at the the Wachovia First Union Center.



Stevens' hit on Eric Lindros and subsequently Lindros' last moments as a Flyer. I'm telling you, I'll never forget that day and being at the First Union Center (now known as the Wachovia Center) for that moment. I think I'll end this post with a message to Sidney Crosby in a makeshift Song of the Day, if you will. Titled, appropriately enough, "Fuck You" by Archive.



I'm such a good sport over this, aren't I? ;-)

You Guys Are Going To Love This Story

This has absolutely nothing to do with sports (actually, there is a brief tie-in to college basketball), but you guys are going to laugh out loud when you read this (probably).

As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post, I am home with my family for the weekend. And naturally, we wanted to do something fun for the weekend. We decided on seeing a movie tonight. I think you guys know where this is going, but I'll build the drama anyway. Guess what movie everyone in my family wanted to see? Yep, you guessed it. Observe and Report starring our favorite actor, Seth Rogan!

I tried to talk them out of it, but I decided to give it a shot anyway because they are my family. Besides, maybe this Seth Rogan movie would not be that bad. The previews did not give too much away about the plot so me being as open-minded as I am (and believe me, I am like this), I decided to give it a shot anyway. Yep, that's right, after all the bashing we did during March Madness, I ended up seeing Observe and Report! (My dad payed for all of us so it's not like I was personally giving Seth Rogan and co. money).

Anyway, let me just say, I really should have tried harder to NOT see it. It was just flat-out bad with very little funny parts. Hell, the only real funny part was the end. But back to the movie (If you're considering seeing the movie, take notes, I'm about to save you some cash), it felt like a bad TV show where they tried to fit in so many stories and plotlines that your mind wanted to explode. Generally comedies are straight up with 1 or 2 stories, this one had 88 one of them and none of them were that good. Let's see, there's a pervert terrorizing the mall by flashing females his junk, Rogan is a manic-depressant, he does not realize that his main squeeze is a 2-cent whore, his mother is an alcoholic, his best friend is a roober, and he wants to work for the police academy! Yep, all this in 86 minutes! And the funny part is, you'd think that with all the plot lines and the shortness of the movie, that it would feel quick, let me tell you what, I swear someone messed with our clocks and the 86-minutes on imdb is a typo because that movie felt like 186 minutes. It moved slower than molasses except for the end when it finally picked up. It's really sad when Seth Rogan chasing a naked pervert through the mall (complete with slow-mo ball-bouncing action) is the funniest part of any movie, but alas, that was the funniest part of the movie. That and the head of the police department (whom Seth Rogan's character butted heads with all movie, I forgot about that plot) sarcastically congratulating him for catching a pervert.

On the plus side of all this, I heard "Second Chance" by Shinedown on a mainstream, popish radio station, which I have not figured out is good or bad. It's good because Shinedown is pretty much my favorite band (Linkin Park, Three Days Grace, and Staind run a close 2nd) and I want more people to hear them and listen to their music and buy their album The Sound Of Madness because they are awesome and they absolutely kick ass, and bad, because I hope this does not lead them to selling out entirely to pop. And it's ironic that this is the album that produces their mainstream single because this is their heaviest album to date, in my opinion. Expect "Second Chance" to be Song of the Day real soon. And I'd like to personally thank Vince McMahon for getting me into Shinedown, if it was not for them using I Dare You (from their album, Us and Them) I would not have gotten into Shinedown in the first place (and American Idol afficionados will recognize I Dare You as a song that Chris Daughtry sang during his time on Idol).

You see this, Shinedown, I am advertising for you! I want subsidies out of this!

Sorry the length of this useless, non-sports related post, but it's 1:20 AM and sometimes I just feel like writing about everything and nothing regarding, well, everything and nothing. And this is one of those times. Just be thankful that I don't publish my powerful personal stories on here (as in regarding past experiences and current desires of certain members of the opposite sex, if you will).