Outlier

Is there a point on the dorkiness spectrum where you pass out of dorkiness and back into cool?  I'm hoping so. 

I was at the sports bar yesterday to watch the UNC/Wake Forest game.  It was surprisingly busy at the bar, and I learned the Daytona 500 was going on, as well as Olympics and some kind of soccer game.  All of those things drew in their own crowd.  NASCAR was on the big screen, with the sound up, so I found a table in back near one of the TVs showing hoops, ordered myself a beer, and watched by myself.  And during the commercials I read my book.  That's the dorky part: I am reading Thackeray's Vanity Fair.  It's a hardcover, and huge, and it's quite absorbing.  So I sat there in the sports bar, surrounded by NASCAR fans and soccer fans and olympic fans, alternating between clapping, alone, for the Tar Heels, and reading a 19th century novel.  I did watch a little bit of the Bon Jovi performance that kicked off the Daytona 500, and studied the speeding cars from time to time trying to discern what is so exciting about it.  But mostly I watched the game, and ate mussels, drank some beer, and read my book. 

Comments

[PG]

:-) I'm impressed that Vanity Fair kept your attention completely with so many other things competing for it. Maybe it was because I read it when I was too young to understand everything happening, but I don't remember its being that thoroughly absorbing.

[MT]

I think that might qualify as "Kipling cool."

[DM]

You're in Maine, right? And a Tarheel fan? I'm surprised that they even had the game.
Correct me if I am mistaken.

[Ima Fake]

It is not that nerdy to read old popular fiction. The book sold because people liked it. In Thackeray's day, a man could have nipped down to the pub, ordered a plate of shellfish and read his book without moment.

[Milbarge]

I read at restaurants all the time. I usually take magazines, so I can lay them open and have both hands for eating. And I'm less fussy about getting food on magazines, I guess. And I probably couldn't focus too well on something more substantial.

sounds like a good day to me.

[Deb]

I think it's great. Of course, a couple of weeks ago or so, I may have been sitting at the bar at BW3s (sports bar) with a Henry Field's seed catalog and a Blue Moon, circling the potential residents of my new garden.

The thing that made it feel less dorky? The new significant other I have acquired, who thought it perfectly appropriate (and actually suggested) that we peruse the catalog together at B-dubs while drinking beer.