The History of a Runner/9

Chapter 9: Mishaps
7:44. Mike, Matt, Craig, Jackie, and Matt's friend Jamey Huggins were in Jamey's car, driving to the Olympic stadium. Everyone was in a better mood than they had been that morning &mdash; laughing, talking, jamming along to the Beatles songs playing on the radio. "Man, I can't wait to see all those compo-titions," Mike told everyone. They shouted their agreement, and it was all good as "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" came to an end and a grocery store commercial came on.

"Picture yourself in a baseball field. You're Mark Lemke, the all-star second baseman for the Braves." The people in the car didn't hear much after that because Matt interrupted, saying, "Oh guys, you've gotta check this out. Jamey does a hilarious old-timey radio impression.  Come on Jamey, give 'em the goods."

"Ah, I dunno..." Jamey thought, being modest. But everyone else in the car insisted he showed them what he could do. "Okay," he said finally, and, making up his line on the spot, he delivered in an old-timey-radio-host accent, "Markie Lemke, Homestar Runner for the Braves."

Jamey covered his mouth. Why did he say that?

"See?" Matt told the others, who were laughing. But a good enough ear could detect that everyone had a nervous laughter.

Jamey was silent for a while. How could he let that slip? This was not good. What was he going to do? At least they probably didn't know...

"Oh hey, I think I see the stadium," Jamey remarked after a while, pointing in the general direction. "We should be there in a few minutes." He heard some whooping, and forgot all about his little slip-up for the rest of the night. After all, it's not like it'll affect anything.

Right?

****

"Shhh!" Strong Bad cried for what seemed like the hundredth time. They were trying to find this Matt guy's place, and it wasn't proving to be easy. Every time they opened a door that wasn't locked, it usually ended up with either screaming or bashing to the heads. This was going to take forever. "What's the number again?"

Strong Sad looked at the address they had gotten. "It says they're staying in number 852," he told them.

"And what number floor are we on?"

"Looks like we're on...floor 4."

"...RRGH!" Doesn't this place have elevators? Strong Bad thought. "Can I get a look at the map?" Strong Sad handed his older brother the packet with all the floors. Strong Bad looked through it, seeing if there was a quicker way to get to floor...wait, what? "This packet says there are only six floors on this map."

"What?" Marzipan commented. "That's impossible. There has to be at least 2 more floors."

"Well, I guess that person was talking about &mdash; wait a minute..." Strong Bad looked at the number 852 on the paper. Something didn't seem right. He flipped the packet around.

258.

"Uh guys...I think we went up too far." Complaints came from everyone else came through. "Hey, shut up, ya big wussies. Now get to walkin'." The gang of 12 walked down two flights of stairs to reach the room, which they reached in a matter of minutes. Amazingly, it was unlocked. They went inside, rested, and waited.

Fun Facts

 * The fact that I chose the Beatles may not seem like much, but there is a bit of a story behind it. I wasn't sure which artist to use, so I took the artists that had their own pages on the HRWiki and recorded how many references the Brothers Chaps had made.  The Beatles won by a landslide.
 * The Braves refers to the Atlanta Braves. Their former second basemen, Mark Lemke, was an indirect inspiration of Homestar's name.
 * Ah, the classic upside-down-paper caper. Who doesn't love that kinda stuff? :)