Peoria man unashamedly admits to watching entire World Series finale on MLB website

Lance Pryor from Peoria, Illinois has belatedly, but unrepentantly, revealed that he watched the entire 7th game of the recent World Series on the MLB website. In the cliffhanger finale, played at Progressive Field, Cleveland, the Chicago Cubs snatched victory 8-7 in the 10th inning, watched by 75 million viewers across the USA. However, that count does not include the numerous, unheralded fans who were unable to watch on TV and could only catch the game on the web or radio. MLB posted a running commentary with each pitch illustrated in a frame on its site. Strikes, balls and hits were depicted in different colours, with a written update on each play. Pryor, whose TV was in for repairs at Stanley Electronics in North Hale Ave, Peoria, was torn between going to Double A's Pizza Sports Bar and Grill in North Radnor Rd or watching the webcast. 'Initially I was so mad with Stanley's because they had promised to have my TV fixed before the final game. But once I started watching on the web I soon got so hooked. I'd forgotten what a fertile imagination I have, honed after watching many Cubs games over the years at Wrigley Field.' When Dexter Fowler hit Corey Kluber over the fence with just the fourth pitch of the game, Pryor knew he didn't need to go anywhere. He cracked open a six-pack of Bud Light and settled in for the duration. Even the rain break before the 10th inning didn't induce him to move away from his PC screen. 'I could visualise the whole thing. I just didn't need to be spoon-fed with the TV. It's such a cop out. It's actually far more exciting to see the drama in your own head.' When the Cubs wrapped it up in the bottom of the 10th with a groundout Pryor just went mad, jumping and hollering in his 3rd floor apartment. 'I could picture the Cubs team leaping on each other in my mind and I was, like, just leaping on top of them too. And I didn't need to be there to know the fans descended on the Cubs dugout, roaring at the tops of their voices. I don't know what the big deal is with television anyway. In the old days you had to wait for the telegraph to give you the score, so

having the internet is just another technology altogether.'

A wave needs a surfer just as much as a surfer needs a wave

The Biennial International Convention of Surfers (ICS), meeting in Oahu, Hawaii, has finally resolved the long-raging controversy about the perfect wave. For decades surfers have contested the concept, with the question being: can a wave be perfect without being surfed on? Now the convention has ruled definitively that perfection does indeed go hand-in-hand with a rider on the wave. 'Without the surfer, a wave cannot qualify for perfection,' is the official communiqué, agreed after days of laid-back discussions and liberal quantities of good weed. 'Over the centuries there have been trillions of waves, maybe even more than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in the world,' says Pete Schleck of Redondo Beach. 'Hawaiians, West Africans and Papua New Guineans were up there long before the current generation of surfers, so they were able to endorse wave perfection. But they still had to be there for perfection to exist. What good's a wave if nobody's on it?' As with the vexed philosophical issues about the sound of one hand clapping and a tree falling in the forest, surfers have long agonised over this issue. At least the surfing community has now decided to confront the Zen essence of the question and answer it, once and for all. 'It's more than just philosophy, dude,' says Ian Falliono of San Diego. 'It's about the essence of surfing. You go out there every day to commune with that wave. You need the wave but the wave also needs you. If the surfer hasn't cranked, peaked, accelerated, torqued or hot-dogged, the wave hasn't really existed and it's like so far from being perfect. Even an ordinary surfed wave is closer to perfection than a stunning unsurfed wave.' The argument has reached new levels in recent years as more and more surfspots have been captured in the lenses of surfer magazines and videos. This has raised an even more refined issue: can a surfer make the perfect wave alone or must he/she be witnessed either by another surfer or through a camera lens? This discussion will only be addressed at the 2018 Biennial ICS scheduled for Jefferies Bay, South Africa. And coming on to the agenda for 2020? Can one perfect wave be more perfect than another?