Many years ago, a commercial for the state lottery taught me that Massachusetts is made up of 351 cities and towns.¹ It didn’t convince me to buy lottery tickets, but somehow that “351 cities and towns” lodged itself in my brain. Tuesday night, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Jimmy Fallon spent five minutes reciting every single one of them.¹ Boston.com’s Peter Chianca described it as “excruciating”. I don’t agree with that, but it was certainly something.

Footnotes:

1. The ad was explaining that all 351 cities and towns receive funds from the lottery, an inefficient tax if ever I’ve heard of one. ↩︎

2. You can find an archive of the full video here, and one of the sped-up version here. ↩︎