Once upon a time, there were alien creatures that wanted nothing more than to suck out human voices like chocolate milkshakes. Fortunately, groups of people called "musicians" had stopped screaming and running around in circles long enough to realize how they could combat these aliens. One such group was a five-man band called Tally Hall. And like many others whose line of work required sweating profusely, the men of Tally Hall wore ties.
Rob Cantor's yellow tie stuck out like a big, fat, annoying ray of sunshine. Although it is a cheerful and friendly color, certain people can be annoyed with yellow after awhile, if for no other reason, because it is so bright. The tie that most rivaled Rob's when it came to sticking out in a crowd was the tie of Joe Hawley, which was a loud shade of red. It had once been even louder, but the color had mellowed after too many tumbles in the wash. This fading of red, however, did not disassociate the color from love, warmth, or clown noses.
Gray, the color of Ross Federman's tie, is thankfully not related to clowns at all. A calm color, it is not extreme in one way or another. It is neither black nor white, neither catlike nor doglike, neither peanut butter nor jelly. It's just gray. And there's never any harm in making fun of such a color because, again, it's just gray. The same could not be said for the color tie of Andrew Horowitz. His tie was green, which for some may bring grapes to mind, and most people don't feel a need to belittle food.
Grapes, for the most part, are sweet, but you come across a sour one every once in awhile. Of course, Andrew's tie was not actually grape green but grass green, and grass cannot be used as a metaphor for someone's personality, unless that someone is a corpse.
Then there was Zubin Sedghi who, being unable to find "sarcasm" on a color chart, decided that blue was sensible enough.
"Sensible," however, was definitely not the word one would've used to describe what Zubin looked like at 6:00 in the morning. Shuffling into the hotel room kitchen with bleary eyes and messy hair, he looked like he'd just been shot with a tranquilizer.
Joe stood at the window across from Zubin, aware of his presence but not of his struggle to stay awake. Gazing through the glass drowsily, Joe took in the sights of the city. He wondered why the tall, metallic buildings before him seemed so out of place. This was Pittsburgh after all. It shouldn't have struck him as odd that there were cars zooming past the windows of every story. The artificial lighting and holographic billboards shouldn't have looked so foreign. Even the mech that stomped past the window shouldn't have phased him. None of these were new sights to him, but it seemed that more and more mechanized things like these could be found in "rural" areas. Since teleporting out of Michigan the day before, Tally Hall hadn't seen anything green. Joe sighed.
"Hey, Zubin," he said wearily, "you ever get tired of all this?" Initially he received no response from behind him, but after a moment there was a rhythmic thumping noise followed by a robotic voice repeating, "Denied. Denied."
"Zube?" Joe turned around. Zubin was trying to stick a Hot Pocket into a rather agitated toaster.
By then Rob had returned from the breakfast hall with a cup of coffee in his hand, and he was just about to ask what Joe was laughing at when he saw Zubin.
"Here," Rob said, handing his friend the Styrofoam cup, "you need this more than I do."
Zubin attempted to give a grateful smile, but he only succeeded in making it look like half his face was falling off. Rob held back a chuckle and walked over to watch TV. Ross had left it on and, for whatever reason, had thought that the news was going to wake him up. One of the others would've changed the channel, but Ross, apparently power-hungry, had taken the remote with him into the bathroom.
