Text Message of the Year

 

I went to the football game with a buddy of mine today.  He had a little too much to drink before the game and wound up leaving during the first quarter.  Since he never came back, I assumed he had gone out to his car to take a nap or something.  It turns out he was sitting on a bench outside the stadium. Depending on whom you choose to believe, he was either just minding his business or he was falling asleep.  Either way the cops apparently didn't like it.

Since I pretty much can't stand cops in general, I do have to say this much.  It was quite decent of those guys to call me and let me take care of the situation.  (I also had a voicemail from them, saying essentially the same thing as this text message.)  They didn't even give my buddy a ticket for public intoxication.  I just had to sign a paper saying that I was taking responsibility for him and then we had to leave the campus.  A lot of other cops would have simply thrown him in the drunk tank and made somebody bail him out later.

So we caught the end of the game on the radio as we rolled out of town.  Fortunately one of us was sober.

World Famous Blogger Spotted During CBS Broadcast

Apparently that dude on the field is some sort of deforestation activist.  I won't get into his issues, but I did get a chuckle when I noticed my shamrock hat and striped sleeves during my viewing of the broadcast.  Andy Warhol says we get fifteen minutes.  It looks like my clock is down to... fifteen minutes.

They were awesome seats though.  Lots of scoring right in front of us.

Air Travel

I spent time on four airplanes within the last week or so.  I took a flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Dublin.  On the way home I took a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Detroit.  What a joke.

Security in the 9/11 world is nothing short of stupid.  The little old lady in her Depends has to get a thorough shakedown because it would be racist for us to acknowledge that young Middle Eastern men are more likely than anyone else to be terrorists.  The next bluehair from St. Clair Shores to hijack a plane will be the first, right?  So why are we so stupid as to pretend that everyone passing through security at the airport is an equal threat?

My flight got to Amsterdam a little early and the scheduled layover was already a few hours long, so I had some time to kill while I was there.  That airport is a backward reminder of 1978, incidentally.  I had always been under the impression that those Europeans were advanced and groovy and whatnot.  That airport isn't worth a shit.  Maybe they're socially superior because they have a lot of hookers and blow over there, but they need to start upgrading their facilities to bring them into the 1990's.  I can tell you that much.

After sitting at the gate for a few hours, I decided to walk over and check the screen to see if my flight would be leaving on time.  I had a 9:30am scheduled departure for Dublin.  The screen said 10:40am to London.  What the hell is that all about?  After asking a few people, I was told that my flight had been moved to a different gate... at the opposite end of the airport.  Cocksuckers.

As my brother and I started hiking it across town, someone made an announcement saying that the flight had been moved.  So the 200 people waiting for the plane started following in hot pursuit.  Remember the old days when each gate at the airport had a separate security checkpoint, instead of having one main checkpoint with everything inside already secured?  Yeah, so do the Dutch.  They remember it because for them the old days are right now.  Knowing that we would have to pass through security again, and knowing that there was a throng hot on our heels, my brother and I kicked it into high gear and beat everyone to the new gate.

We came down an escalator and found that the next security checkpoint was already a clusterfuck.  At least we got our feet onto solid ground though.  After another thirty or forty people came down the escalator behind us, the security area was full.  Nowhere to go.  People were on the escalator, getting thrown down on top of people standing at the base of the escalator.  Those people at the base of the escalator were getting shoved forward into those of us standing on the ground.  Brilliant.

(This whole episode was apparently the result of a bomb scare.  They cleared out half the damned airport instead of realizing that the fucking bomb had been there for 70 years and probably wasn't going to hurt anyone.)

After a few minutes someone had enough sense to hit the emergency stop on the escalator and prevent anyone from getting crushed to death.  The security people had no sense at all.  They stopped the security line dead in its tracks, telling us that there were too many people in the wing of the airport to which we were going.  So the crowds of people trying to get to their new gate were lining up all the way back down the hallway from which they came.

After about fifteen minutes of standing around and wondering when these jagoffs would get their act together, we were finally allowed to pass through security - again.  Then we walked down to the far end of the terminal and found that there were no airplanes.  We were getting onto a bus instead.  Bus ride from Amsterdam to Dublin?  Not quite, but it seemed just as stupid.  The bus held somewhere around 30-40 people.  There were 200 of us who needed to get to the plane.  Yeah, that took a while.  They drove us out to a tarmac in the middle of nowhere, at which point we walked up the steps to our plane - Air Force One style.

The flight from Amsterdam to Dublin was on Aer Lingus.  It was a quick flight and I enjoyed the old-school outfits that the stewardesses were wearing, but it was annoying that they were charging money for a can of soda.  For fuck's sake man.  Is it really that tough out there?

On the way out of Dublin, the line for the check in and bag drop was enormous.  There were five agents working the counter.  After we were in line for ten minutes, three of the five agents left.  Just packed up their shit and left.  That didn't exactly make for an efficient check in process.  Then the same crowd of people had to line up and wait to get through security.  Good times, good times.

We got back to that dump in Amsterdam without any further incident.  The layover this time was quite a bit shorter, so we headed straight to the gate and boarded the plane.  It left twenty minutes late, for no apparent reason.

When we got to Detroit, more nonsense ensued.  We had been given some sort of customs document while on the plane.  Who are you, where did you go, where do you live?  That sort of stuff.  With the completed document in hand, we had to wait in another gigantic line before we could talk to some high school dropout who now works for the federal government.  Once again, why do we play this game?  I'm a United States citizen, born in this country and living in this country.  I don't need to be handled the same way as someone from Tehran.  This is not complicated.  If you think I'm smuggling shit, then x-ray my luggage.  (Actually I hope they already do this.  I don't know.)

So that was stupid.  Then, once we got through that checkpoint, we picked up our checked bags.  Time to leave, right?  Nope.  Another fucking customs checkpoint was right outside the baggage claim.  We had to stand in line again, then answer the same set of questions... again.  Stupid.  For people with connecting flights it was even worse.  They have to do everything I just described - customs, baggage, customs again.  Then they have to go back through check in and bag drop, back through security, and back into the terminal to catch their next flight.  Idiotic, seriously.

The summary of this post is as follows - air travel is bullshit.

Expectations, round two

We're not talking about those silly micks this time around.  We'll deal with them in due course, but tonight we discuss minor league baseball.

My brother and I were sitting around a few weeks ago without much to do.  Our mother then called and informed us that there was a family gathering scheduled for September 5th at Comerica Park.  Okay then.  That's good.  Who doesn't enjoy a Tigers game, right?

We wound up chatting about baseball.  I know a lot about baseball.  My brother knows very little about baseball.  He asked about the team in Lansing.  I told him that they're a single-A affiliate of the Blue Jays.  He said that he would like to go see them play.  I checked the schedule and found that they would be playing a home game on September 6th.  Ten bucks for box seats.  So we bought a couple of tickets and that was that.

I expected a rather ho-hum experience.  I was wrong again.

We arrived at the ballpark last night and found that they had something called "Thirsty Thursday" going on.  $2 beers, $2 sodas, and a free concert after the game.  Pretty cool.  Our $10 box seats had us in the third row, behind the visitors' dugout.  Awesome view.  I remarked to my brother that I should have known about this sooner.  I like beer and I like baseball.  If there was a place within an hour's drive of home that combined both for a really cheap price, I should have been informed.

The stadium atmosphere for a Class A baseball game is, in a word, awesome.  There was a point in the game where Brett Lawrie came to the plate.  Lawrie plays third base for the Toronto Blue Jays but has been working to rehab an injury, so he played for the Lansing Lugnuts last night.  The opposing manager chose to walk Lawrie and face some unknown kid instead.  The jumbotron in center field cut immediately to Hamilton Porter from The Sandlot.


Awesome.  Just awesome.  I wish the big leagues were more like this.  Any time the opposing team made an error, there was a smartass reaction on the video board.  Jim Carrey laughing hysterically, Adam Sandler yelling, "You blew it!" and so on.  Can you imagine the whole stadium watching as the jumbotron makes fun of Alex Rodriguez?  Pure genius.

The concert after the game was put on by The Verve Pipe.  They drew a fairly decent crowd, allowing for the fact that it was an outdoor concert at 10pm on a weeknight.  The $2 beer sales continued after the game and during the concert, so I imagine this played some role in the number of people who chose to stick around.  We didn't stay long though.  My brother had to work early this morning and I really only wanted to hear that one song from back in the day.  It was unlikely that they were going to play that one any time soon, so there wasn't much reason to stay.

Unfortunately the Lugnuts blew a big lead and lost to Fort Wayne though.  The loss was enough to eliminate Lansing from the playoffs and end their season.  So, if I want to return for another round of cheap sodas, entertaining baseball, and free music, I'll have to do it next summer.

Expectations

Many years ago I was a different dude.  I was married and full of the sort of silly optimism that people possess until they figure out that most of the world is basically full of shit.  My wife had a birthday approaching, so we decided to spend a long weekend in Chicago.  Each of us had been there a few times but we had never gone together.  In case you're unfamiliar with the Chicago scene - it involves a little walking around and a lot of shopping.  Not exactly my cup of tea, but hey, it was her birthday.  Plus there are lots of bars where you can spend $6 each for shitty bottles of Sam Adams until 4am, so that has to count for something.

Before we left, I decided to pull a switcheroo.  I bought plane tickets to New York and booked a hotel room for three nights.  Instead of driving for a few hours to Chicago, we drove the twenty minutes to the airport and hopped on an airplane.  My primary expectation at the time was to surprise my wife.  Mission accomplished.  She never saw it coming.  My secondary expectation was to see a new city for a few days.  I thought it would be like Chicago but a little bigger.

That expectation was wrong.  New York was not only bigger than Chicago, but also better in every way.  And the word 'better' is an understatement.  After spending a few days in New York, it was clear to me that Chicago was basically a glorified shopping mall tucked within a worthless shithole of a city.  And, coming from the Detroit area, I happen to know a thing or two about what constitutes a worthless shithole of a city.

The scenery was better in New York.  The food was better in New York.  The atmosphere was better in New York.  The culture was better in New York.  The bars were better in New York.  (Pints of Guinness were less than five bucks, and I got roughly 1/3 of them for free, as compared to the bullshit Chicago bars with their $6 bottles of Sam Adams and $5 cover charges.)  The transportation was better in New York.  The layout of the streets was better in New York.  In summary - New York exceeded my expectations in every way.

I'm not married anymore and I don't take as many vacations as I once did.  Therefore I tend to approach whichever trips I do take with a rather subdued set of expectations.  Give me some nice scenery, a few decent pints of beer, and a chance to get away from the daily routine for a while.  That's good enough.  In the most recent case I expected the football game on Saturday to play a significant role in the trip as well.

Once again, my expectations were exceeded in every way. 

I saw incredible scenery, ranging in character from ancient architecture to a state-of-the-art stadium to sweeping vistas overlooking multiple seas.  I stopped at something like twenty-five pubs.  Each of them had its own unique character and friendly people making me look forward to the next one.  Along with my brother, I drove more than 1,200 miles around the island.  We saw exactly one cop car and exactly one traffic jam.  The cop car and the traffic jam were both in Dublin.  And the traffic jam only occurred because people (including us) were making their way to Croke Park for the All-Ireland semi-final between Dublin and Mayo on Sunday afternoon.  I can't drive ten miles at home without seeing multiple cops and at least one traffic jam.

Even the weather managed to provide a pleasant surprise for us.  Warm and sunny during the day; cool and breezy at night.  Excellent.  The food was about as bad as advertised, but hey, nobody's perfect.

We'll get to some of the stories in the days to come, but it turned out that the football game on Saturday was just something to do for a few hours before resuming the vacation.  It really wasn't a significant part of the trip at all.  And this, in an unexpected way, is the best thing I can say about my visit to Ireland.

Good to be home... I suppose

There will likely be a handful of stories to come out of that vacation before too much longer.  Beer, scenery, American football, Gaelic football, crazy roads, awesome people, nightlife, farmland, castles, history... no point trying to make one post out of it all.  Just several distinct stories such that each stands on its own, but they were all developed during the same trip.  So I intend to give each topic its own post, in due time.

Anyhow, that's the plan.  For now I have a lot to do, so there's no time for writing.

In thinking of the title for this post though, I had to go with the old cliché that it's good to be home.  Quite frankly though, I'm not really sure that it is.  I'd be content to waste away my evenings listening to the music and chatting with the folks at the pub in Lisdoonvarna.  Alas, money runs out and life goes on.  So here we are.

More to come...