Mike O'Connell

I’m hardly the first person ever to note this, but Game Four in a seven-game series is by far the most decisive. Sure, each game counts the same, but the difference between a 2-2 series and a 3-1 series is the difference between apples and baby wolverines.

With their Game Four come-from-behind victory last night in Montreal, my hometown NHL team (that would be the Washington Capitals) has taken a commanding 3-1 lead in its first round playoff series. Red sweaters are coming out of the closets all over the DMV, and the sound you hear is wingtips, sneakers, and sandals of all varieties stepping onto the bandwagon.

A few miles up the road (or down the road if you’re coming from Montreal), my actual hometown hockey team (that would be the Binghamton Black Bears of the Federal Prospects Hockey League), is also engaged in a postseason tournament. After a dominating regular season, the defending champion BBB have sailed through their first two rounds of playoffs, poised to take on the Carolina Thunderbirds in the league finals starting this Friday.

It wasn’t the only reason I was in Binghamton this weekend, but yeah, I was at the game two nights ago.

Yup, I’m on this bandwagon too. (I’m the one wearing Skechers.)

One of the more ridiculous shows on “TV” these days is Hulu’s Mid-Century Modern. Sort of a gay version of The Golden Girls, MCM follows the lives of three fabulous gentlemen, friends for years but never paired in any ways, living together and leaning on one another after the unexpected death of a fourth. Starring Nathan Lane, Nathan Lee Graham, Matt Bomer and a host of high-profile guests, this is where you find hilarity in the streaming universe: gays making easy gay jokes about each other. Perhaps with lesser actors it would just be silly or mean, but damn it’s hilarious with these three. They make in-group humor like the best of old-school Jewish comedians, again sort of channeling The Golden Girls, getting in gratuitous digs against those outside the group as well. All low-lying fruit and all hilarious. Today’s the day I come out… as a Mid-Century Modern fan.

I’ll admit that one episode wasn’t enough to get beyond the silliness. Watch the first one and it just seems childish. But give it a chance, be part of the fabulousness for 24 minutes a shot, and keep in mind you’re not watching Citizen Kane. The jazzy score is an added bonus, as are the stylish sets, way more conservative than one would expect. Of course the men have money, and of course they spend it, and it’s fun to live vicariously for a bit, even as, well, someone outside the group. I’m exactly the person that should be made fun of in these scenarios, and yeah, they get us normies good… but the real laughs are when they do it to themselves. There was a time in which this was standard in comedy: Jews making fun of each other, Blacks making fun of each other, and then we all got too sensitive for any of it.

Mid-Century Modern has no such issues.

Do yourself a favor and invest a few nights in watching Season One of Mid-Century Modern. It’s beyond “guilty pleasure”; it’s just plain good.

Today on Math and Musings Franklin and I discuss our Spring Break travels to… Baltimore.

And Aberdeen.

And the exotic Havre de Grace…

Maryland.

Yeah, not the fanciest places you’ve ever heard of but you know it’ll be a good story.

You’re welcome.

Anyone who ever suggests that golf is boring: watch a tape of the 2025 Masters. Sunday afternoon. What I thought would be one eye on the TV, watching Rory McIlory cruise to a green jacket… it soon became me glued to my screen for two hours like some kind of 1950s family mesmerized by television for the first time.

Golf. Not boring. A dramatic Masterspiece.

Okay, it was the college basketball final none of us wanted to see, and honestly the result wasn’t the one I wanted either, but damn that was a great game Monday night. Don’t let the sloppy last 10 seconds fool you; this one was legit.

Remember all that talk at the beginning of the tournament, how Florida had a player who was seven foot nine and he wasn’t even playing?

Yeah, they did okay without him.