Three! Three! Three!

I hide from confrontation. I might even hide from any interaction in public. If someone's walking in my opposite direction on the street, I usually try to find something interesting in my pocket or in the sky right above my head. I don't know why I do this. I hate that I do. I feel like I'm contributing to the downfall of decency and giving a career to value-mongers like Bill Bennett. But since I've committed myself to this blog and putting myself in uncomfortable positions, I'm making an effort to look people in the eye, or say hello to strangers...

...or agreeing to a Pop-A-Shot challenge against a hooky-playing high school student in a Tilt arcade in a San Diego mall...

...for $20.

Readers, I was thinking of you when I accepted the challenge. That's definitely out of my comfort zone. I don't think it's unreasonable of me to cower from a crowd of teenagers. Especially those that linger in arcades during school hours. I did have a laptop and several pawn-able items in my shoulder bag. For the record, they came to me. I was playing a casual game of Pop-A-Shot when the one in the straight-billed hat with rhinestones told me he wanted to play me. As soon as he asked, I of course looked for an authority figure--take the quarter jockey behind the ticket-redemption booth. He didn't have issue with some illegal gambling in his establishment. I knew this because even though he heard the proposition, he didn't lift his head from his copy of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Indeed.

Now I'd played one game prior (the one the kiddies saw) and shot a lousy 32. We played head-to-head, meaning we shot at the same time. Although I focused on the front of my own rim, I knew that we were going shot-for-shot because of the "awww"s and "DAY-m"s I heard at every bucket. And I was on fire. Seriously, I'd never played a better game of Pop-A-Shot in my life and the idea of this kid playing just as well scared me. Maybe the ticket-booth guy even started to watch. Ten seconds left and the rim pushed back to the 3-pointer range. The buzzer sounded just as my last shot went in, but it didn't register. We were tied at 61. Then that last one counted to push me up to 64. Day-m!

I had missed probably 3 shots in the whole game. It was fucking awesome. I took the $20 and ran out of there before I took a double-or-nothing gamble.

Last movie I watched: Be Kind Rewind. There's about 20 minutes of good stuff, and I think it's worth bearing the other hour-plus of horrible, horrible plot and sappy, saccharine love story.