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How much can really be said about tonight's game? It's the seven hundredth game the Phillies and Braves have played this season, both teams are bad, Braves fans hate seeing the Phillies again and Phillies fans hate seeing the Braves again. And with David Buchanan pitching tonight, everyone is so, so over it.
This seems like a perfect time to bring up one of my favorite Sesame Street clips, which is a tribute to boringness -- in both subject matter and presenter.
Oh, Bert. Boring, beloved Bert. Only he could think pigeons are interesting. This segment is fantastic. First off, the hat. Bert has a little pigeon hat placed on oblong head. He made up a dance to celebrate the weird way that pigeons walk. The song actually has a little pigeon coo in it, too! "Doing the [coo coo] pigeon." And then there's the mind-bending awesomeness of the full-length Bert puppet actually doing the pigeon dance. As a child, my mind was blown. And not just because I wondered "What kind of person would actually make up a song and dance about PIGEONS?"
Bert also collects paperclips, a fact used to great effect in one of my top 5 Christmas specials, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. Not convinced yet that Bert is the most adorably boring member of the Sesame Street gang? Here's the pigeon song, but this time with it includes an extended intro of Bert narrating footage of pigeons.
"Oh, I love Pigeons more than anything else in this world -- besides oatmeal." Sesame Street is clearly the greatest children's show ever, for many reasons. But among them is Bert. They created a boring, vanilla character and gave him an insane friend, and constructed their friendship in such a way that even with Bert as the perturbed straight main, it was hard to tell which one was more insane sometimes (Bert collects PAPERCLIPS, for God's sake). But most of all, Bert always made me feel like it was OK to like what I liked. Even as a kid, I knew pigeons were stupid, dirty rat-birds. But Bert loved them and saw the beauty in them.
The Phillies are bad and tonight's game might be boring, but we love the Phillies anyway, and the most insane among us will be watching. Here's the lineup, fellow loonies.
Tonight, I bet David Buchanan's pitching will be FOR THE BIRDS! HAR HAR HAR HAR I'll show myself out.
Discuss the game in the comments below.