I’ll be 21 on Wednesday. Less than 48 hours to go! Hooray!

On the day when the Anaheim Angels won their first world championship, the Rally Monkey helped spur a record-setting day in “My world.”

This website received 82 unique hits Sunday — including at least 19 from web searches for the Rally Monkey — to set a new daily record for hits in a day. The old record was 80, set on May 28, 2002, my parents’ 25th anniversary.

“My world” almost broke that record on Friday, but finished just short with 78 hits. It would have fallen just short on Sunday, too, if not for the extra hour provided by clocks’ “falling back” early Sunday for the end of Daylight Savings Time. The record-tying 80th hit, at 11:00 PM, and the record-breaking 81st hit, at 11:07 PM, both took place during the 25th hour of the calendar day.

Regardless of that technicality, there can be no doubting the recent surge in hits — there were 61 hits on Saturday, in addition to Friday’s 78 and Sunday’s 82, for a three-day total of 221. The sudden traffic swell is difficult to explain, especially since weekends have generally seen less traffic than weekdays throughout the history of “My world.” It is possible that the frequency of my recent blog postings has caused this website to gain clout generally in various search engines. (At least 55 of Sunday’s hits came from search engines.) If so, the record set Sunday may be quickly broken this week.

In addition to the 19 Rally Monkey hits and two other hits from World Series-related searches, there were nine hits from searches related to Sept. 11, five from hits related to the sniper shootings, and two from searches related to the Russian hostage crisis. There were also 18 hits from other, unrelated searches, such as “high school homecoming,” “krispy kreme newington,” and “muhlenberg college stripper.”

All-time busiest days in “My world” history:
1. October 27, 2002 - 82 (Searches for “Rally Monkey,” and other search engine hits)
2. May 28, 2002 - 80 (Mass e-mail announcing photos re: my parents’ 25th anniversary)
3. October 25, 2002 - 78 (Searches for “duck in a noose,” and other search engine hits)
4. November 30, 2001 - 74 (Mass e-mail announcing launch of “My world”)
5. September 10, 2002 - 68 (Mass e-mail announcing website update re: 9/11)
6. September 11, 2002 - 65 (9/11 webcam commemoration, and 9/11-related searches)
7. October 26, 2002 - 61 (No known reason for surge in hits)
8. July 11, 2002 - 59 (Mass e-mail announcing general website update)
9. July 10, 2002 - 55 (No known reason for surge in hits)
10. March 11, 2002 - 49 (Mass e-mail announcing opening of NCAA Pool signups)

Two days after “My world” almost broke its daily traffic record of 80, finishing with 78 hits, the website may finally break the record today. As of 8:53 PM Pacific time, the site has 75 hits, five short of the daily record with three hours to go until midnight. It’s unclear exactly why today’s surge in hits is occurring, especially since weekend traffic is usually slower than that on weekdays. But there have been a number of hits from people looking for pictures or movies of the Rally Monkey… and the 25-hour day (due to the end of Daylight Savings Time) may have helped too. More to come soon.

No Rally Monkey needed; Angels win Game Seven, 4-1!!!

If you ask me, last night was really the night that Anaheim won the Series. It was almost inevitable that the Giants, having lost after being three innings away from the championship with a 5-0 lead, would be too deflated to win tonight, especially with the home crowd on Anaheim’s side.

Go Angels!!! Go Rally Monkey!!!

USC’s football team almost cracked the Top 10 this week, rising to #11 in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today polls. The Trojans (who were #15 and #16 in those polls, respectively, last week) are the highest-ranked team with two losses, and the second-highest-ranked Pac-10 team (behind #9 Washington State).

Apparently the Russians decided the only way to incapacitate the terrorists inside the theater was to paralyze them with nerve gas. It worked; the bastards slumped over in their chairs before they could set off any bombs. Unfortunately, as a side effect, the nerve gas also killed over a hundred hostages.

Philpsophers and pundits can endlessly debate the moral merits of killing 115 to save 800 — Hiroshima, anyone? — but there’s no defense for this piece of Kursk-style stubbornness on the part of the Russian government:

The government continued to refuse to identify the chemical substances used in the operation, even ignoring demands by foreign missions such as the U.S. Embassy which requested the information to evaluate the health implications for their citizens in the audience of a popular musical when the theater was seized.

Doctors who were forced to treat the hostages moments after the raid were not told what gas was used, complicating their efforts to prescribe remedies.

CNNSI.com is finally using the headline — “Seventh heaven” — that I predicted somebody would use after the Angels won the ALCS with a huge seventh-inning outburst. Of course, this time the reference is to the Angels’ forcing Game Seven of the World Series.

Anyway, the following is from the Associated Press, via CNNSI:

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Hard to believe a little ol’ monkey could have done all this.

“I knew this team — all it needs is a little spark,” Scott Spiezio said after his three-run homer got things going. “To have the fans behind you, they never gave up. If it takes the Rally Monkey to get them going a little bit more, we love it.”

Game Seven is less than six hours away…

(Oh yeah, and there’s 3 days left until I turn 21!!!)

I get a 96th-percentile 167 on the LSATs, the Trojans crush the Ducks, and the Angels rally from a 5-0 seventh-inning deficit to force Game 7. What more could I ask for?

Well, an Arizona win over Washington State would be nice… it would help USC’s Rose Bowl hopes… and at halftime, incredibly, the Wildcats, winless thus far in the conference, are leading the #9-ranked Cougars 10-5! Click here for the most updated score and play-by-play.

UPDATE, 10:33 PM: Washington State unfortunately survived the scare from Arizona, winning 21-13. So the Cougars remain undefeated in the conference, and they need to lose 2 of their next 4 games in order for USC to have a chance of reaching the Rose Bowl.

Angels rally, take a 6-5 lead! The monkey’s going NUTS! Go, Troy Percival, go!

It suddenly occurred to me while watching the World Series that I should find my stuffed monkey, Beck Jr…. and a couple of swings later, the Angels are within two runs. Coincidence? I think not!

The Angels need that monkey to do some serious jumping. San Francisco 4, Anaheim 0, two out, bottom of the 6th.

Nick Pelletier, a Newington High School Class of 1999 graduate and an Air Force Senior Airman currently stationed at Osan Air Base in South Korea, smiles for an engagement photo with Misty, whom he married last summer. To view wedding and honeymoon pictures and other photos, visit Nick’s homepage.

USC’s football team caught Oregon on Saturday like a Duck in a noose.

The #15 Trojans beat the #14 Ducks, 44-33, and it wasn’t even that close. The Trojans dominated the second half, and led 44-19 until Oregon scored two garbage-time touchdowns. I think we can now consider the Oregon football billboard on Figueroa Street thoroughly avenged.

Oregon is virtually eliminated from the Pac-10 title hunt, but USC remains very much in the race. The Trojans just need to win their next three games — two of which are against teams that aren’t doing very well this season, Stanford and UCLA — and hope that Washington State loses two of its next five games. The Cougars still have to play Arizona (tonight), Arizona State, Oregon, Washington, and UCLA. (There is a possible scenario whereby USC would need to root for UCLA to beat Washington State to give the Trojans the conference title.)

Meanwhile, Game 6 of the World Series is tied 0-0 in the 3rd inning.

After dozens of busy signals, I finally got through to the LSAT score reporting line — and my score is 167, which puts me in the 96th percentile. That’s not quite Yale-worthy, but it puts me within striking distance of NYU and Columbia, and Georgetown is a definite possibility. I’m above the median score for Fordham, Boston College, George Washington, American U., and UConn.

Becky is proud of me. :)

Yay!

In other news, the USC-Oregon game looks like it’s going to be a hard-fought, see-saw affair. Trojans lead 14-13 with a few seconds left in the first quarter.

First things first: Newington High School’s football team beat Maloney 14-7 Friday night for their second consecutive win — the first time the Indians have done that since starting last season 3-0. (They finished the season 3-8.) This season, they are now 3-4 with four games remaining. (You must understand the context of this: the NHS football team won a grand total of three games the entire time I was in high school.)

Now, looking ahead to tomorrow…

The first big event occurs in less than six hours, at 7:00 AM Pacific time, when my LSAT score will become available by phone. Of course, I’ll undoubtedly be sleeping at 7:00 AM, so the big event will really occur when I bother to wake up, groggily grab a phone, and call. I’m hoping for mid-160s…

The second big event is the USC football team’s must-win game against Oregon at 12:30 PM Pacific time. (We need to catch the Ducks in a noose!) This game is crucial not only because the loser is effectively eliminated from winning the Pac-10, but also because Oregon’s athletic department had the unbelieveable audacity to paint a giant f***ing advertisement for Oregon football on the side of the Hotel Figueroa, just down the street from OUR campus!!! That’s what we call a declaration of war, my friends, and it means unequivocally that we MUST beat them. Let’s just hope Carson Palmer, Mike Williams & company will be weapons of mass destructions tomorrow in Eugene!

The third big event, of course, is Game Six of the World Series at 5:00 PM Pacific time in Anaheim. The Angels are trailing 3-2, seeking to repeat the home-field feat of the Diamondbacks last year, so they’re going to need some big-time help from the Rally Monkey (and perhaps a couple of their players… though really, I think the monkey can handle most of the hard work).

By the way, while we’re on the topic of the Angels, the funniest thing I read about the three games in San Francisco was that at one point, some Giants fans started chanting, “Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.!” A small group of Anaheim faithful correctly shouted back, “We’re not L.A.! We’re not L.A.!”

So, in conclusion… Wish me luck on my LSAT score, Fight on Trojans, and Believe in the Power of the Rally Monkey!

Oh yeah, one more news item: 4 days till I turn 21!!!

(Oh, you wanted real news? Well, the seige in Moscow ended, thank God; the Democrats are thinking about running Walter Mondale for Senate in place of the late Senator Wellstone; and the authorities are battling over who should get to put the snipers on trial first. Also, as friend and fellow blogger Andrew rightly points out, I have been remiss in not mentioning Hurricane Kenna on this site. Despite my usually intense interest in weather generally and hurricanes especially, I have been so consumed with sniper news that, frankly, I barely noticed it. But Kenna was a ferocious Category 5 storm at one point, and it has now made landfall in Mexico as a powerful Category 4.)