Danos is in town. You might not know him by name, but if you are a frequent visitor to ATF (and I can't imagine anyone who reads this part of the site isn't) you've almost definitely seen him without his shirt on. I'm really psyched about it, since he's a good friend and it looks like he's going to be staying in the city indefinitely. Which is huge, because it means we have a third for any EA sports games we play at my apartment. And since he's currently unemployed, the next few weeks might be chock-full of three pointers and massive dunks.

Oh, and as promised (and by promised I mean threatened), the latest news in my NBA seasons:

Boston: I'm twelve and two, just coming off a loss to the Philadelphia 76'ers.

Dallas (with Ben and Danos): I think we're 4-4, or 5-4, coming off a string of losses to various teams. We have to step it up.

Sam has set up a franchise in the game, which is a level of involvement I don't think I ever want to get involved in. In fact, my playtime in general has gone down considerably this week. The reason for this is that Martin, another friend of mine from school, is also in town. This comes up enormously huge as well, because Martin brought his turntables and left them at my apartment with a bunch of his records. So I've been playing around with mixing and scratching; Martin has a breaks record of sound clips from video games. I'll tell you this: you haven't lived until you scratched the word "Fatality" from Mortal Kombat to a hip-hop beat. Other great samples include "Round 1: Fight!" and the reading off of all the countries in the game.

Last night: Ben, Dan, and I are at Dan's temporary residence (one of those ridiculous apartments in Manhattan, with rooms that have names other than kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom) on the UWS. After hanging out for a while, we decide that we want to get pizza. But, as is the familiar situation, no one wanted to make the call. Start the waiting game.

The first move was taken by Danos, who called 'not calling.' (A quick and enormously powerful move. This is similar to calling 'fives' on a chair, an act which we hold as a sacrament of hanging out [other things on which we'll call fives includes beers, computers, and girlfriends. Though honestly there's no way we would go and take another mans beer). Ben quickly countered by declaring himself in no state to be making phone calls. Which left me in the completely untenable situation of being the only guy left. However, in a markedly forward-looking move, I had earlier emptied out my pockets and had no idea where I had put my phone.

Stalemate. Time passes, no one really saying anything. The tension in the air was thick, but I was in a good position, having eaten only hours earlier. And I know for a fact that Ben needs to eat every 30 minutes or so before he beings to get grumpy.

He made a move - In a surprising act of kinetics, Ben got up from his couch, found my phone, and dropped it on my lap (a bewildering riposte to what I thought was a impassable defense). I hemed and hawed for a bit, but ended up deciding that I would make the call. Bar-B-Q chicken pizza, from any place. Not a problem. We developed a backup plan (which itself took another half hour, as the debacle ensuing over *that* question had me throwing my phone away from me for a while), which was mushroom and onion. So I make the call, asking for a barbeque chicken pizza. Which the guy on the phone refuses, which is fine. But he then proceeds to break my shoes for the next ten minutes or so, offering things, suggesting things, many of which involve ham or sausage. Or soup. Finally the call is finished, and I put down the phone, exhausted by the effort it took to keep up with the guy who took the call.

When the pizza came, we realized that the reason he was giving me a hard time is that the random pizza place we had picked out of the directory was a Kosher pizza place. And no, they don't make barbeque-chicken pizza. Felt a little bad about that, but I guess that one of the good things about the size of NYC is it allows some anonimity.