I headed out to the ballgame last night with my brother-in-law and his wife, along with the other brother-in-law. The game itself was awful with the Astros losing to the Nationals 7-0. It was one of those nights where nothing could go right for the home crowd.

The bad luck even extended to the stands. Minute Maid Park, like many other ballparks, does a “Kiss Cam” at some point during the game during the inning breaks. The Kiss Cam pans the crowd and focuses in on couples, who are then supposed to kiss with 30,000 plus fans cheering them on.

At last night’s game, the final couple shown on screen kissed and then the guy got down on one knee and proposed, with the “will you marry me” message on the scoreboard and wedding march music blaring. To everyone’s surprise, the woman had an absolutely horrified look on her face and got mad at the guy, dumping a bag of popcorn on his head and then storming off. The whole crowd of 30,000 people sat in stunned awkward silence at what they had just witnessed. The poor guy just sat there for the next half-inning before walking out to a loud cheer from the crowd.

Probably the oddest thing I have ever seen at a ballgame. The evening went so bad for the home team not even the cheesy marriage proposal went right!

OK, this is a little off-topic, but still pretty funny. Last Friday night I went with my wife, brother-in-law, and a friend to Barnes and Noble for the release of the last Harry Potter book. I’ve gone with the wife before to these releases and although I’m not a Potter fan, I always thought the parties they have are kind of cool. However, this last one was a freak show on par with the opening night for a Star Trek movie, complete with people in costumes everywhere. I will give them some credit since most of them dressed up as characters other than Harry Potter. There were so many people there that were carrying around sticks thinking they were wands, and it seemed like quite a few of them believed that their sticks held some type of magical properties.

However, the highlight of the evening was after they began selling the books. My brother-in-law and I went and hung out by the front door waiting for my wife and her friend to get their books so we could go home. While we are waiting, this slightly chunky teenage girl comes through the front door and blows a whistle to get everyone’s attention. Of course everyone gets real quiet, thinking it is one of the workers making an announcement, at which time she proceeds to yell out at the top of her lungs “(Unnamed character) dies!” She then runs out the front door, with a mob of about 30 freaks running out chasing after her. The leader of the mob looked just like Harry Potter and was holding a magical “wand”, and it was hilarious to see them all chasing after her. We didn’t see where the mob ended up, but since only a couple of the people of the mob ever came back in the store, we’re guessing that Harry and his mob caught up with her. My guess is that it was the Harry Potter look-alike that got to her first, held up his wand, and yelled “Harry Potter’s gonna go Azkahban on your muggle a$$!”.