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I was talking with a former improv student of mine last night, and he mentioned he was going on vacation on July 14, to which I snapped “Bastille Day!” He asked, “Why is it that you know that July 14 is Bastille Day?” Here is the story of how I know:

A few weeks ago in the UCBT green room, Matt DeCoster said to me “May 9th has to be the most boring sounding date of them all — BY FAR.” I’m pretty sure this was the opening line of the conversation, and I don’t remember what spurred it. What I do remember is Matt, Dave Thunder, Rob Webber and I spent the next 20 minutes debating the point.

May 9 did sound pretty boring, we agreed. But I was sure that Matt had made a snap judgment and that with a bit of time and a cooler head, we could come up with a more boring date. What was boring about May 9, I asked? “It just SOUNDS boring,” exclaimed Matt. He mouthed the words very deliberately “MAY NINE” and then shook his face as if he had just accidentally tasted sour milk. “It’s a TERRIBLE sounding date.”

We agreed. And more importantly, we saw that it wasn’t the content of the day — or what events you might associate with the date — just the sound of the date was intrinsically boring. Fine. I proposed “June 2.”

He considered. “No. Actually, I think ‘June 2′ sounds pretty jovial.” He tried it out, saying “JUNE TWO” followed by an approving nod.

Matt dug his heels in early — I don’t think he would have admitted it even if we had come up with one. But to his credit, I couldn’t come up with one that even *I* thought was more boring, and I desperately wanted to top him. We all agreed September through December were out of consideration because the sounds of the months are rhythmic enough to make all their dates sound interesting. Same with January and Feburary, although I thought January 20th was a contender. “That’s not even close to boring,” exclaimed a bewildered Matt.

“March 10″ was the closest I came up with, which gave us pause. But in the end, those two hard staccato syllables sound at the very least urgent, and maybe even ominous. I pointed out that March is a boring month because there’s no three day weekend, but somehow there wasn’t a boring sounding day in it.

At some point I proposed “July 14″ to which Matt said, “Are you crazy? That’s Bastille Day — it’s one of the most exciting dates of all time.” It broke the rule of evaluating a day based only on what it sounded like, but Matt’s conviction convinced me that Bastille Day was worth making an exception for.

It is very fun arguing with Matt DeCoster.

I’m doing stand-up tonight. Come see. Details here: http://www.willhines.net/2006/05/23/more-stand-up/

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