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general

Rockies-Mets

Our fourth of July was spent watching the Rockies destroy the Mets, and then a fireworks show. Pictures are here. The summary:

  • Our seats were in section 222, 3rd row. That’s just in from first base, on the first deck club level.
  • I wore the Brad Hawpe t-shirt I got for free a couple of games ago, not because I am a big fan, but because it was about 100 out, and wearing a black t-shirt didn’t seem like a good idea.
  • LOTS of people there. The last two games were sold out, and this looked like it was too.
  • It was very nice to go from the outdoors to the air-conditioned concourse behind the club seats. I thought more than once that we should just not sit down and watch the game from the bar.
  • I got a Papa John’s prefab rubber pizza, which wasn’t bad. It’s still weird that I remember when there were about four Papa John’s locations in the world, and one was a block from 414 S. Mitchell and I always went there when I had a buck or two for a slice, and now they have kiosks at ball parks and airports everywhere.
  • We got to our seats, and not only was the heat unbearable, but the sun was coming right at us as it set. I had no sunglasses, and was wearing jeans, further proving that I am a genius.
  • The national anthem was sung by a woman from the Air Force Academy, and was actually not bad. We also got a quartet of F-15s making a high speed pass over the stadium, which I thought was cool.
  • First pitch was thrown in by this old WW2 vet, which I thought was nice. He barely got it in from the front of the mound, but he saluted the crowd and waved to everyone, and that was cool.
  • The Mets drove in three runs in the first inning. Sarah thought it would go downhill, but I said, “don’t worry, the Rockies will probably score ten runs in the next two innings, like the last two games.”
  • I should mention that there aren’t as many Mets fans, but some. They, however, are not total pieces of shit like Yankees fans, and manage to shut up for most of the game.
  • At the first Rockies at-bat, Cory Sullivan splinters his bat and a huge chunk flies at the pitcher. I didn’t see if it actually hit or not, but he kept pitching. First time I’ve seen that happen, but I guess it happened at a Brewers-Cubs game recently and the pitcher had to leave the game.
  • Second inning: Brad Hawpe hits a home run with Atkins on base, and the crowd goes nuts. I don’t feel as stupid wearing his shirt anymore.
  • Third inning: I am completely overheated. Retreat to the AC, drink a gallon of Powerade, I feel much better. Cory Sullivan steals two bases, then gets in on a Todd Helton sacrifice fly.
  • I swear, Todd Helton looks more and more like pro wrestler Mick Foley every time I see him. He really needs to shave off that 1997 goatee.
  • Fourth inning: three runs. Fifth inning: six runs. I don’t mean the score was six, I mean a home run, a double with bases loaded, and three more in. Oh, the Mets got one in. 12-4. There are two Mets pitcher changes in the fifth.
  • Sixth inning: three more for the Rockies, one for the Mets. 15-5. This is ridiculous. If it weren’t for the fireworks, we’d probably leave.
  • Someone’s kid right behind me WILL. NOT. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP! He he doing all of these sound effects and singing the Vonnage theme song over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and if it was souvenir bat night, I would be in jail right now for smashing his fucking skull in, and then beating his dad’s testicles so he could never breed again.
  • The sun starts to go down, and we get a bit of a breeze.
  • 7th inning: Rockies score two more. I am 50% certain they will win with a 20-point lead.
  • They do the kiss-cam, where the jumbo screen camera zooms in on a couple and they are supposed to kiss. This one guy kisses his girlfriend, and then grabs her tit while on camera. They quickly go to the next shot.
  • (BTW I always think it would be great if they zoomed in on two guys and they kissed, like maybe during pride week or something. The Jesus folk here could use a good kick in the ass.)
  • For the 7th inning stretch, a guy on the trumpet plays God Bless America.
  • They got the biggest wave going I’d ever seen. It was HUGE and went around time after time. Each time it was approaching, it sounded like you were on a beach when a Tsunami was coming in.
  • A scoreless 8th inning drags on. A massive wind is blowing in, and every hit pops up and behind. The kid behind me is still singing the Vonnage song, and asking his dad 200,000 times what a wave is.
  • After the 8th, it starts raining. This makes me wonder if they would call the game, and if they would cancel the fireworks.
  • Top of the 9th, 16-6, the Mets need to get in 11 to keep it alive. They get in one. Game over.
  • This is the first time a team has swept both the Mets and the Yankees in regular season play. And even if some other team beats that, the Rockies hold some kind of record for sweeping both and for losing 12 games in between.
  • This is the 4th time I have seen the Rockies, and the 4th time I’ve seen them win. They’ve lost many games when I wasn’t around, though. Maybe they should slip me some season tickets, right?
  • They open up the field so all of the people in the bleachers and facing away from the fireworks can get on the field. They’ve roped off the infield, so you can just go and stand there.
  • Some kids run out there and are holding up brooms (i.e. sweep) and running laps around the outfield.
  • I’m jealous that we don’t get to go on the field, until I realize that it’s going to be as packed as a Who concert in Cincinnati
  • The Barney purple dinosaur and a few others are using a slingshot to throw rolled-up t-shirts into the crowd. The kid behind me is yelling “MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEHEREHEREHEREHEREHEREHEREHERE” and I seriously want to beat him to death.
  • The dinosaur shoots a shirt, and it is going right into our section, and I’m watching it arc, and it goes right toward us, and I watch it go right in and HIT ME IN THE FUCKING KNEE. I wonder if the kid would shut up if I gave him the shirt, and then I keep it.
  • It is, BTW, the shittiest shirt ever. I could make a better shirt with a magic marker and a grocery bag.
  • The lights go off, and they show one of those “season sofar” highlight videos. It has stopped raining.
  • As far as the fireworks go: the fireworks themselves were pretty damn good. We were close, and there were a lot of specialty shells.
  • You could see a sea of 10,000 camera phones trying to get pictures, and I knew every single one of them would produce nothing.
  • The music really sucked. It was all of this jingoistic country music, and they played the Neil Diamond song “Coming to America”, which I can’t listen to with a straight face because of that Will Ferrell skit where he’s ND and says “I wrote this song because of my extreme hatred for minorities and immigrants…”
  • Overall though, the fireworks show was good. Loud, bright, and very good.

So, a good 4th. Next game is against the Brewers, I will be at the day game for that one.

My computer just shipped from China. Apple, can’t you get a warehouse in Reno or something? Christ. And now, I must pack up a million things for eBay.

Categories
general

Apple Store, Kwik-E-Mart

I bought a new computer. It is the Macbook, the higher-spec white model, with the 2.16 Ghz processor. I bought it online, which means it hasn’t shipped yet, and now it’s a holiday, so it probably won’t ship for a couple of days, and then it will take a couple more days, so I’m like a kid trying to fall asleep on the night before Christmas. I also know when I get the thing, there will be days and days of moving files, reinstalling stuff, reconfiguring things I redid long ago, and so on. Plus I need to figure out where I will physically put the thing, and how I will hook it up. I’m trying to think of a way I can still use this giant 21″ monitor, and the laptop display at the same time. I don’t know how good Apple’s multiple display stuff is these days. I know it sucked in Windows.

So I went to the Apple store yesterday. I went to Cherry Creek mall, which is gigantic, and is a real mall in every way, not one of these de-malled shopping center strip malls. It’s like Short Hills mall in Jersey, or a bit like the Bellevue mall on the east side of the lake in Seattle. It’s all very upscale and high-end, all Williams and Sonoma and no video arcade. I realized that I have had some sort of seachange where it comes to malls. I used to love malls – ask Mr. Falli, I would go to any mall for whatever reason and spend hours there, even if I hated all the stores and didn’t buy anything. It was something hypnotic about the mall, relaxing. Now that I don’t have money to spend, don’t have that collector impulse anymore, and don’t like to walk as much with this mostly-healed-but-still-recovering foot, it’s just not the same. I guess I get some of the quaalude effect, but it’s also a bit depressing.

Anyway, Apple store. They had a ton of iPhones around, and I played with one for a bit. My first reactions: way smaller than I thought; I can barely read the text; I bet this screen scratches and smudges in ten seconds, look at my iPod screen; how do I get a menu or whatever, it keeps flipping and moving and the interface is weird, I feel like an old person trying to use a mouse; I can’t type for shit. (The best commentary on this in a baseball context is here.) Anyway, no $600 iPhone for me. I seriously use my cellphone about 6 minutes a month, so that’s too much of an investment, even if it does run widgets or a 20×20 pixel web browser. While I was there, I looked at the Macbooks that I ordered but didn’t have yet, which made me depressed, because I was typing away on something I will wait like another week to have. Also, the Apple droids bugged the shit out of me when I was on the iPhone, and then nobody talked to me while I was messing with the laptops, and I really wanted someone to ask me if I had any questions, so I could say “I just bought one of these!” and then they’d be all nice. Or not. Whatever. I’m sure they have tons of homeless people in there all day using their free internet.

The last three submissions to the zine have all been excellent. (Actually 4 from 3 people.) The good part of this is that all of the writing is great; the bad part is that it makes me worry about my own writing, and the fact that I am getting absolutely nothing done these days. Anyway, that has me up to 36,000 words out of 80,000. I think I am going to close submissions of stories shorter than 5,000 words so I can just get a few longer bits in there. I am also writing an article for Slouch Magazine about the production process of the zine, which is largely a huge rant about why I even do this at all.

Oh, I went to the 7-Eleven in Denver that was redone as a Kwik-E-Mart for the Simpsons movie. It was not as overwhelming as the ones I’ve seen pix of in California. The signage was all funny, and they had the Slurpee machines redone as Squishy machines. The one product they had a lot of was Buzz cola, and I bought a 6-pack. No idea what it tastes like yet. I will give a full report and maybe get some pix at a later date. (And no, I am not hording these cans as some sort of collector’s item because 1) soda cans rust over time. 2) I am trying not to collect shit anymore and 3) the cans will be worthless over time, because they made so many, and every Comic Book Guy will be hoarding them in their mom’s basement.)

OK, time for breakfast.

Categories
general

Baseball, Die Hard

First, the baseball update. I now have tickets for the following games:

  • 4th of July vs. the Mets, club box seats on the first base side of the press box. This is also a fireworks game, so there will be many explosions and flares and whatnot.
  • Aug. 8th, Rockies vs. Brewers. Afternoon game, I have an infield box seat between third and home, below the club seats we had for the Devil Rays. I took a seat like 20 rows back, to avoid the sun.
  • Sept 3rd, Rockies vs. Giants. I have a seat in the second row of the rightfield box. Unfortunately, this is too far for me to throw D-cell batteries at Barry Bonds’ giant mongoloid head. (Also, I’m sure if I did, he would keep them for the Barry Bonds Hall of Fame.)

I also bought a cheap AM/FM/TV radio to bring so I can hear the announcers during the game. I can’t believe I could not find one lying around the house. We got this free shit MP3 player from Qwest, and it has a radio, but it is FM only, and the games are only broadcast on AM in Denver. (They are on FM pretty much everywhere else in the state. I heard this was because the Broncos preseason was more important than the Rockies, so they pushed them to AM. And with the way the Rockies have been playing lately, I’m not surprised they got bumped for news coverage of local junior-level amateur womens’ golf.)

eBay is slowly paying off. I have made about $1100 since I started about a week ago, so I can get a new laptop. I have a bunch of other sales pending, then I will get all of my money out of PayPal and/or get a debit card from them and go to the Apple Store and try to beat down all of the idiots drooling over the iPhone. They might as well call that thing the iScratchAndSmudge, because I don’t see how that thing doesn’t turn into a giant smear of grease and abrasion. I look at my iPod, which I treat fairly well, and then imagine that it would be pressed up against my face, and also that it would cost at least three times as much. I’ll stick to my Sidekick, especially since it now looks like a huge bargain.

I’m going to the gym now, so the foot is pretty much better. I’m not, and the treadmill is killing me, but hopefully that will go away soon.

We saw the new Die Hard movie this weekend, so I feel obligated to mention that in the context of some kind of review. First of all, I’ll say that Bruce Willis may be horrible in about 90% of the movies he tries to make, but this franchise is the one kind of role he can really pull off. I think the first two Die Hards were decent, above average but nothing that made you think or had a really intricate plot. The third one, with Samuel Jackson, was excellent. The chemistry between the two of them balanced it out. And even though the plot was over-the-top stupid (who the fuck can get from Wall Street to Central Park in like three minutes?) I still liked it.

This one was not as good as the third, but it wasn’t bad. The parts where the “I’m a Mac” kid joked around were pretty good. The computer stuff: 100% fake. 200% fake. Kevin Smith: stick to directing. The dialogue in the serious parts: corny to the point of laughter. But the action scenes? Jesus fucking christ they really tried to outdo themselves. Crashing a car into a helicopter? Taking out an F-35 jet? This stuff was awesome beyond belief. The plot in general was about the same as any of the other Die Hards. The one thing missing was that the bad guy wasn’t related to those Nazi fucks that were in all of the first three films. I guess they ran out of brothers.

This film fits in well with the whole summer blockbuster lineup, and is probably the one I wanted to see most. I have no desire to see the Transformers movie; I was too old to play with Transformers as a kid, so I never got into them in the first place. I’m sure the film will be 90% inside references to the original toys or comics or cartoons or whatever. I’ve sworn to never, ever see a movie based on a comic book again, so that cuts out like a third of the lineup. I would like to see the Simpsons movie, although I think there’s about a 50% chance it will bomb. Rush Hour 3 might be decent. The Bourne Ultimatim might not be too bad either. Now that movie tickets cost less than Rolling Stones reunion tickets, I can justify seeing some not-top-tier movies.

Okay, got a whole stack of crap to go to the PO, so I better get to that.

Categories
general

Spicy food avoidance

There’s a lot of Mexican food in Denver, which sounds like a pretty good deal. But I’m finding as of late that I can’t deal with spicy food anymore. And I don’t have a long history of liking spicy food in the first place, so maybe it’s not that my insides are looking like the sleeve on a wizard’s coat, but that there’s some kind of psychosomatic training issue that stands in my way.

When I grew up, we never ate any spicy food, ever. Ever. If we made tacos, they were out of the Ortega kit from Kroger, and half the time I would put ketchup on them. Probably the spiciest thing I ate in my first sixteen years on this planet was that shaker of red pepper flakes that’s at Pizza Hut, and when I did try it, I was so immediately shut down, I never wanted it again. This was long before Elkhart was overrun with Hispanics, so there were no bodegas or good restaurants. (And for the record, I think it’s kindof hilarious that the Hispanic population exploded there, given the number of geriatric racists in the town.) There was this local chain called Hacienda that was about as Mexican as John Wayne in a Klan robe, and later I worked at Taco Bell, but that was it, until I got to college.

In college, I avoided spicy food. This wasn’t hard, because there weren’t any Indian restaurants in Bloomington, and the Mex places were more like Tex-Mex, with fajitas and shit, and not really hot items. I guess the Chinese places did have some hot numbers, but I stuck to sweet and sour pork. Otherwise, I avoided anything with any amount of chile or spice in it.

I remember one time being in Chicago with Simms and Bennett, and they were totally Jonseing to go to this Indian place. And for whatever reason, probably because the only Indian food I ever had was the stuff Simms was trying to make in his kitchen, I really didn’t even want to try it, so I just ordered a Coke. Simms and Bennett had all of this shit, and were chowing down and saying “Oh man Konrath, you have to try this Dal, it is fucking incredible”, and I was like “well, this Coke is pretty good. Can I go find a hot dog cart or something?”

You also have to realize there is some subset of the tech culture that worships chiles like they are christ on a cross. I don’t know why; it’s the same reason geeks get into Star Trek – maybe it’s nature, nurture, the quality of the product, but it just happens. So half of the places I work have had all of their machines named after various types of peppers, and the sysadmin that does that usually has that big chile pepper poster on the wall of their cube. The insanity goes to the point of flying to New Mexico to get raw peppers and then dry them, or growing them yourself in your apartment like you’re getting a pot harvest going. But the one thing common was this huge machismo pissing contest about the hottest peppers, about getting the craziest most insane sauces, finding the hottest green sauce at the most obscure restaurant, and turning the lunch product of beans, beef, and a flour tortilla into some giant test of manhood and individuality.

And if you ask anyone in that situation, “why the hell do you even like chile peppers?” they will give you some great philisophical discussion that makes no sense. And I always wondered, did I need to be born in another state or country to get this? I mean, I absolutely hated my first beer, but after a few months, it was a taste I acquired. I didn’t drink beer in the way I drank Coke though; it’s something about the way you let the flavor set in, what you ignore and what you focus on. An example: I have been drinking tart cherry juice for my foot, because it supposedly helps because of some enzyme. So I got this stuff at a health food store (if you see cherry juice that says 100% juice at the grocery store, 10 times out of 10 it is 4% cherry juice and 96% apple or pear juice blend. They can legally say “100% juice”, they just don’t say which juice.) and I poured a glass of it and drank it, just like I would drink a glass of grape soda. And it was HORRIBLE. I couldn’t finish it. Later I talked to Simms about it, and he said to get one of those little nyquil cups and drink it as if it was medicine. So I did that, and no problems. I could easily do four, five, six shots of the stuff if I treated it as medicine and not a tasty beverage.

And that always made me wonder if I needed to approach the food differently somehow, like ignoring the pain when you’re in the dentist’s chair. After I moved to New York, I started eating Indian food, and I slowly worked up to hotter dishes by doing this. And it wasn’t bad – I was eating the food for the experience, more than the flavor. I don’t really know how to describe that, but I worked my way up to hotter and hotter things. (Although one time I was trying to eat a vindaloo and I had a front tooth that was slowly working to the point where I needed a root canal, and that hurt like FUCK and set me back a bit on hot foods.)

So here I am in Denver, and we went to this place called Rocky Mountain Diner, which is sort of cowboy-esque in its theme, and has a lot of giant plates of hearty food, like chicken fried steak smothered in gravy and whatnot. And last night I ordered the chimichanga. Now, from what I remember, a chimichanga is basically a small burrito that is tightly wrapped and then deep fried, and you cover it with sour cream and basically take a year off of your life. But when I got my food, it was slightly different, like maybe it was pan-fried, and it was smothered in this green sauce. And when I took one bite, my system basically shut down, and I knew my intestinal tract would be about as stable as the current Somalian government for days. I felt a need to eat a few more bites, but it ate away at my tongue so much, I just couldn’t do it. And it baffled me as to why I could eat the most fiery Indian dishes back in New York, but I couldn’t touch this stuff. Maybe I have some dental work coming up that I don’t know about? I have a touch of a cold, could it be that? I don’t know, but it bothered me a bit. I always hated having tons of dietary or culinary preferences, so every time I ordered at a restaurant, I would have to say “hold the sauce, hold the mushrooms, hold the peppers, hold the cheese, hold the meat – actually, just give me an empty plate and a glass of water and charge me ten bucks.”

I did go get the cure this morning – McDonald’s hash browns. You drunks know what I’m talking about. Man I love it when I manage to get to the golden arches before 10:30. (Actually, that time varies widely these days, so don’t fuck with me about how it’s really 11:00 or whatever.)

I’m starting to hate eBay. I have a million auctions; I have allegedly like a thousand dollars in auctions that have closed or will close. I have two people who owe me money. I have no packages to ship out. I have made about $100 on this sofar, and I’m more than a week in. I wish I could push a big red button and just say “ALL AUCTIONS CLOSED! SEND IN YOUR FUCKING MONEY NOW! GO! GO! GO!” but I have to wait. That means I’m going to the My eBay page 900 times a day.

Oh! I got us Rockies tickets for the 4th of July. Box seats, as good as the ones we had for the Devil Rays, except we don’t have to watch the Devil Rays. It’s against the Mets. I have no idea how they are doing – I will have to read up – but the show will have fireworks, and we have kick-ass seats, and if it’s 200 out, we can duck back into the ACed clubhouse. I actually walked to the box office to buy the tickets, and I got there at like 6:07 and they closed at 6. So I ordered online. I will go back down there and pick them up, if that’s at all possible.

If anyone wants a good laptop, I am selling my old one on eBay, but I haven’t listed it yet. It’s a P3 with 128M RAM and Win98SE, so it’s no speed demon, but it is ultra small and light, so it’s a great road computer. I think it’s worth a couple hundred bucks. More info if you need it, but I thought I’d mention it here first.

Speaking of, gotta go box up some crap that just sold. Whee!

Categories
general

Another “not in New York anymore” moment

I had an “I’m not in New York anymore” experience yesterday. I’m selling a bunch of stuff on eBay to try to finance a new laptop and to free up some space in my apartment. I’m also at the point where I care a lot less about collecting stuff, and would rather just have the stuff I need, and cash in the bank. So there are a lot of big-ticket items on there, and I’m amazed at how much profit there is in selling collectible coins and money. If I knew this earlier, I would have carefully invested a ton more in silver proof sets and gold bullion coins.

(And if you’re interested, I’m not hard to find on eBay. But please don’t fuck with my auctions. The last thing I need is someone running up the price on something so I get to pay all of my fees in duplicate.)

Anyway, my first auction ended on Monday, so I boxed it up, and prepared myself for the dreaded trip to the post office. See, in New York, the PO is slightly less comfortable than an unlicensed proctologist with rusty equipment. Rude staff, long lines, maybe one or two people per hundred customers, small lobbies, bulletproof glass, bad hours, and no convenient locations whatsoever. But now, I loaded up the package in the car (instead of hauling it on the subway), then found the place a few blocks away. It had a huge parking lot and plenty of open spaces. The inside was giant, and had separate stores for supplies, passports, and even a section for stamp collectors. Through some scheduling fuckup, I arrived right at noon, and expected a horrorshow. There was nobody waiting, and four clerks available. The guy that helped me was really nice, made small talk, and wasn’t behind two feet of solid lexan with a little tank turret slit. I was out in two minutes. Jesus, is this what life is like in the rest of the country?

Also last night, I got this really strong weather deja-vu. It was really hot all day, I think it even broke 100. We went out to Safeway after dinner last night, and the weather had this really eerie resemblance to many of the nights in 1992 I described in Summer Rain. The still air of the day broke down from the temp and gave the atmosphere this charged, energetic quality. I always thought this was because I endured the hundred-degree heat with no AC, and when it dropped at night, it felt good. But I spend all of my time in the AC now, so it must be more of a heat/humidity thing. I think in New York, this never happened, because the whole place is a concrete radiator, and the winds are broken up by the buildings, and you never have that rapid of weather change on a regular basis. But here, and in Bloomington, the air has that really specific taste to it, and that brought me back.

I almost wanted to re-read SR last night, but then one of two things will happen: I will think the writing is horrible and cringe-worthy and get all depresso about it, or I will suddenly want to write a similar book but maybe in Seattle or maybe in Elkhart or whatever, and I’ve vowed that I can’t go back to writing that kind of stuff. I mean, I’m not writing anything else these days, but if I was, it would need to be more like Rumored.

I’m currently reading the Anthony Kiedis bio, Scar Tissue. It’s not bad. He had a pretty weird life starting out – his mom was a hippie, his dad was a drug dealer, he got into some after-school specials as a child actor, his dad used to hang out with Sonny Bono, a really weird survey of events. I’m just to the point where the band starts, so we’ll see how it continues.

I am walking again, and off steroids, so that’s good. I won’t be running any marathons any time soon, but I hope to start taking some walks to get my legs back to normal (or better). I also, for whatever reason, want to learn how to canoe or kayak. I’ve canoed before, but not in a long while. I don’t know about the kayak – it sounds okay, except for the flipping upside down part, which would freak me out. But there are some very cool lakes around here, and if I could find a place that I could give them $20, and then paddle around in the middle of nowhere, and maybe take a camera with me, I think that would be a good waste of time and money. Another thing I wish I could do is cross-country ski, but I don’t know how hard it is, or if it would fuck up my ankles or knees. Also I don’t know how much balance it requires, because I’m damn lucky I can walk upright, let alone do anything that requires coordination.

Okay, time for dinner.

Categories
general

Rockies – Yankees

Yes, another baseball game report, but this is the big one: Yankees versus Rockies. Another annoying bulleted list:

  • This game was HUGE. I got there about an hour early, and it was roughly three times more crowded than last Friday’s game. (The Yankees are a bit more popular than the Devil Rays.)
  • The ten dollar lot across the street was charging $30.
  • There were an insane number of Yankees fans. There were more Yankees jersies and hats than you’d see at Yankee stadium for a home game.
  • Also present: lots of large bald men with no necks acting like assholes. Also lots of loud-mouthed women with orange tans, frizzed-out frosted white hair, and pure black eyebrows. It was like being back in Astoria.
  • For $60 each, our seats were shit. Section 149, row 20 – that’s straight back from first base. It’s the worst of both worlds: you can’t see the scoreboard, and you can’t really get a good look at the field. They’re also uncovered, and not near any food.
  • Sarah had to meet me there a half hour late from work, so I had to fend for myself. See above about no food – it was a real struggle just to get a hot dog and a water. The lines at everything were completely insane. Every hot dog stand was like a confessional at the rapture.
  • There was a guy sitting in front of me that looked just like James Cromwell (aka George Sibley from Six Feet Under). He had on the old-timey hat and the nerdy dress-casual clothes and the whole deal. While I was sitting there, about three dozen people tried to cut through his row, and he got more and more pissed, which was both funny and annoying.
  • The stadium SOLD OUT. It was probably twice as full as Friday’s game. Even the nosebleed seats were sold out. (And nosebleed might be a literal term, given anything above the 20th row in the top deck is above 5280 feet.)
  • I don’t think I’ve seen a single Asian person since I moved to Colorado, which is somewhat amusing considering I used to live in a neighborhood where I was the only person not born in China. Well, over from us was a whole gaggle of Japanese, all holding up giant posterboard letter-per-person signs spelling out MATSUI.
  • Sarah pointed out later that each team had a player named Matsui. They were probably rooting for Hideki, but maybe they support their country and not just one team.
  • I mentioned that maybe if they wanted him to pay attention, they could have at least spelled out the sign in Japanese.
  • The lady next to me was this typical Long Island piece of shit that had the “New York is the best city in the world and we’re so much better than anything else, although I don’t actually live IN the city, just way the fuck out in Long Island” thing going on. Which brings me to my next point.
  • I don’t know if I am a Yankees fan or not. When I was in New York, I was a Yankees fan, because so many of my coworkers were Red Sox fans, and I was sick of hearing about it. And there, a Yankees game had a lot of tradition to it, and it was a nice little thing. It was like going to Coney Island and getting a hot dog at Nathan’s, or going to Times Square and beating a homeless man with a lead pipe: good fun for the whole family, in the spirit of the Big Apple. But I’ve found that when you leave New York, the kind of people who still associate themselves with New York are the pathetic, soulless assholes who are trying to cling onto this fake ideal as a way to define themselves. And part of that fake ideal is being a total prick. Yankees fans HATE it when people come to Yankee Stadium and cheer on the other team. Why is inundating the Rockies’ stadium and acting like an innsuferable prick any better? It isn’t.
  • I suddenly found myself surrounded by 40,000 of these assholes. I also found I was suddenly the biggest Rockies fan in the universe. I wanted them to win the World Series at this point. Hell, I wanted them to win the Superbowl, the Masters, and the 08 presidental election.
  • Jeter got the kind of response that George Bush would get at a conservative christian gun show. If you remember that Being John Malkovitch movie where he crawled into his own head and only saw John Malkovitches, if Derek Jeter did that, it’s pretty much what it looked like, with all of the Jeter jerseys out there.
  • You can get a Yankees fan very pissed by loudly saying “Now A-Rod, is he the one that admitted he used steroids, or is he still denying it?”
  • It’s also funny because I don’t think any of the Rockies players except maybe Helton could actually afford to buy steroids.
  • The game started really fast – pitch, out; pitch, out; pitch, out. I thought we’d get to the 8th inning at 0-0 in 20 minutes.
  • Pretty much every Yankees pop to the outfield was effortlessly caught, which became more and more hilarious as the game progressed.
  • The Yankees were having real first-base problems due to a lack of a certain someone who is injured right now. They called in so many people to play first base, I seriously thought maybe I had a chance to get down there for an inning or two.
  • To me, the only thing funnier than watching an NL pitcher with a batting average of like .130 come up to bat is watching an AL pitcher with a .000 have to bat at an NL stadium. I swear Mussina was going to start crying every time he got to the plate.
  • It was sort of pissing me off that Jeter could get to first base and the crowd pop was bigger than the first Beatles concert at Shea Stadium, but when the Rockies scored, people were largely like “yeah, whatever.”
  • Torrealba hit a home run, and I thought the Dina Lohan clone next to me was going to have an aneurysm.
  • The biggest tension of the game was in the 8th, when the Yankees loaded the bases with two outs, and Posada came up to bat. This was right after Hawkins came in to pitch, relieving Fogg, who had a good seven innings. Anyway, every Yankees fan in the place was absolutely, positively certain that Posada was going to hit in a grand slam and end the game. Strike, strike, strike. Much mullet hair pulled and obscenities shouted. First the Sopranos go off the air, then this. These people had nothing to live for, except maybe the hopes that Billy Joel would do a summer tour.
  • Some Rockies fans started getting more vocal about things toward the end. The George guy in front of me kept shouting stuff, like yelling “postseason!” when A-rod was at bat.
  • Also, it appeared that the rockpile (i.e. bleacher) seats were all bought out by drunken Red Sox fans, who started chanting “Yankees suck” and questioning if Johnny Damon’s mother was in fact married when he was conceived.
  • I gimped up at the end of the 8th to try and get closer to the doors, which was a bad idea, because the entire deck was filled with people, and I had to struggle to see the last of the game. Then Mr. Damon struck out, and it basically became Kent State. The team with the highest payroll was beaten by the team with the third-lowest payroll, and to a contrarian like me, that’s good baseball.

Photos here, although they aren’t that groundbreaking if you saw the last two sets.

Categories
general

Have a root beer!

I’m going to babble on about root beer. I can think of a couple of distant memories from my childhood that somehow make root beer important to me. One is that when I was a little kid, maybe three, I had this plastic cup. I think it was one of those sippy cups, but you could take the top off or maybe put a straw in it. But the cup was brown plastic, and the outside of it was textured like a root beer barrel, with a fake imprint of knotted wooden boards. I probably didn’t drink much root beer – more like Hi C – but it was my favorite cup forever, and I think even twenty years later, that thing was still knocking around my mom’s kitchen cabinets somewhere.

The other thing is that when we lived in Edwardsburg, Michigan, there weren’t many culinary options, except for “drive to Elkhart”. But there was this drive-in restaurant, one of the only places to eat in town. (From what I remember, there was a sit-down dinery type place that we very occasionally hit for a Sunday brunch, and I seem to remember a hole-in-the-wall pizza place, but I don’t think we ever ate there.) Anyway, this drive-in was a local and independent that resembled an A&W, but had its own branding and details. It still had all of the old-school trappings though: carhop service, the menu with a big metal button you pushed to place an order, the trays with the rubber hooks that hung onto your car window. Fries were in plastic baskets; broiled burgers came in foil envelopes. Even thinking about the food now makes me wish I could drive two thousand miles and order ten of everything. But the big thing was the root beer: cold, frosty, sweet, and served in glass mugs. I think the restaurant had some sort of baby bear/mama bear/papa bear sizing theme, although I could be hallucinating that. But I do remember us kids got little tiny root beers, but the adults got a huge mug. That root beer, the taste of that super-cold, super-sweet carbonated soft drink is what always sticks in my head as to what “good” root beer should be.

I should add that in my adult life, I’ve been to two surviving A&W restaurants that weren’t the bastardized mall franchise versions. One was somewhere in Southwest Washington or maybe Northwest Oregon, and was across the street from a putt-putt golf course where I went for an afternoon. It was this strange octagon shape, with an inside restaurant and outside drive-in stalls that were closed. The other was near Cornell, that little town that neighbors Ithaca that Mick Foley is from, and I’m too lazy to look it up. Anyway, this was an honest-to-god A&W and still had drive-up service. I bought the biggest size glass mug, which I still have. I also got a quart of root beer to-go, and they pulled out a plastic milk-type carton and filled it from this big tap that resembled a beer keg’s tap. I drank the whole thing on the way back to my hotel because I had no fridge, and that put me off of root beer for a bit. But now I wish I had one of those taps in my kitchen.

Come to think of it, there was a bastard A&W in College Mall in Bloomington. It was somewhat scary, and I think they didn’t have hamburgers at all. They had a hot dog that was passable, with cheddar cheese and bacon bits on it, but their hotdogs were very nitrite-y and also overpriced, and the place was always very skeevey anyway. The root beer came out of one of those bag-in-box fountains, just like any other soft drink at a fast food joint, and in a wax-coated paper cup, didn’t do much for me. But it still had a faint connection to its drive-in lineage.

I’ve tried a lot of root beers in the past, and I think what I like contradicts what “serious” root beer connoisseurs might enjoy. First of all, any of that vanilla creme shit is off my list; I really don’t like it, especially when it’s a really fakey, artificial vanilla taste. It always tastes like some kind of cough syrup to me. Any of the creme soda versions of root beer are, to me, not root beer and are removed from the discussion. There are also a bunch of sub-categories of root beer that either I don’t like or that should probably not be in the same division, like black cherry or any of the other cherry-oriented root beers out there.

I think one of the other major axes of division is the general taste. Stuff like A&W or Hires are pretty far in one direction, with very little taste and a lot of sweetness to it. To me, that’s where it’s at, although you can go too far in that direction and get a really synthetic taste. (Buy a fountain root beer at a Burger King in an airport, and there you go.) You can go off in the other direction with much more sarsaparilla, birch beer, or anything that tastes slightly more bitter, rich, or has more “root” or “beer” to it. Don’t forget that the “beer” comes from the fact that old timey root beer was actually brewed. Instead of jetting carbon dioxide into giant tanks as big as your house (which is how Coca-Cola does it), people would mix the flavor, some sugar, and a bit of yeast, and let it sit for a while to ferment. (Hey, that’s where the barrel comes from!). This makes a root beer that has much more of that darker flavor. It can also add a percent or two of alcohol to it, but who’s counting.

(And yes, I tried this. In college, I worked with a couple of people who were all about brewing beer, and they got me hooked up with a store that sold the yeast and flavoring. I tried a two-liter test, and it turned into liquid poo. Plus it’s cheaper to go buy a 2-liter of A&W at the corner store than to fuck around with your own brew for weeks. Still, there’s a certain romance to the idea of making your own mix, although I’m too lazy to try again.)

Format is important. A giant icy mug of fresh draft A&W with a tall head: good. A can of A&W from the supermarket: not as good. A fountain-poured A&W from the food court in a paper cup: maybe bad. Glass is important; even if you have a two-liter from Kroger, pouring it in a real glass mug with some ice makes it twice as good. When IBC first came out (or when I first saw it anyway), that was magic, because it was at a point when glass bottling was going away for Coke and Pepsi and others in favor of the 2-liter, and here were these six-packs of amber old-school bottles that made it all better. (I loved drinking those in the halls in my dorm, so the RA would freak out thinking I had a real beer.) So glass is good, maybe for a temperature thing or a taste thing you get from metal cans, but maybe it’s just nostalgia.

(Before I forget, I will mention that Hires root beer has a different meaning if you work around computers a lot, and that always trips me up.)

(Oh, also gotta pay homage to Tom Sample here. From the NecroKonicon:

“Have a rootbeer!” On McKinley road, somewhere before Mishawaka and South Bend and on the way to IUSB, there used to be an ice cream place that had a sign out front in the summer of 1990 that said “Keep cool! Have a root beer!” Somehow derived from this, Tom Sample and Jon Konrath had a ritual of yelling “Have a root beer” at pedestrians to scare the living shit out of them.

I’ll mention two other brands that don’t really fit into this classification. The first is Barq’s; it’s been around forever, as a smaller or regional brand. But it got bought by Coke and pushed nationwide in the late 80s. I remember it really exploding around 1994. This was a weird time for soft drinks; Coke was trying to get OK Cola going (which didn’t), and the Crystal Pepsi mess had just went over. A million boutique brands were flooding the market, and the majors were trying to keep up. One second it was tea, like Snapple. Ten minutes later, it was refined water, like Clearly Canadian. This was a great time for the consumer, except that you might get hooked on a product that went away in six months.

So Barq’s came out of that, and it was different. First, it had caffeine, which is good. It also has less sugar content, which supposedly gives it more “bite”. It doesn’t have less sugar for the sake of any heavy flavoring, though. And it’s less carbonated than other root beers. I like Barq’s in theory, but I find that the carbonation makes it sort of “heavy”, and it just sits in my stomach and makes me sick. I think my fondest memory of Barq’s was when they had those stick-on tattoos included in each box. Right before a second date with someone, I put this giant heart with an arrow through it on my chest just below my shirt line, and did the “hey, I got a tattoo yesterday!” and freaked her the fuck out.

The other root beer that doesn’t fit the model is New York Seltzer. Back in the day, they had these clear or almost-clear sodas that had a flavor to them. My favorite was the grape, but I also enjoyed the root beer, which had just a faint amber color to it. It didn’t taste like a strong root beer, but it also wasn’t like these flavored water drinks that are flooding the market now. They also came in glass bottles, which I loved. I remember first getting turned onto these when I was in upstate New York for a couple of weeks in 1988. So the memory always reminds me of sweating it out in the Catskills, watching Morton Downey Jr. late nights on local TV, driving around the Hudson River valley for hours to see a historic plaque, and that sort of thing. Good times. I heard a rumor this stuff came back, but is horrible, so what can you do.

The reason I got on this trip is that we were at Cost Plus and I bought this party keg of Virgil’s root beer.. I have to admit, my only motivation was that I really thought the idea of root beer in a keg was cool. So I got it home and completely stripped down and reconfigured the fridge so I could get the thing in there upright, and left it for a few hours to cool. This was a real party keg made out of metal with welded joints and the whole nine, not just some plastic hokey deal. To get it rolling, I had to pop open a valve on the top, which released a huge hiss of pressurization built up from being thrown around the back of the Subaru for an afternoon. Then I turned and pulled out a little tap, and root beer magically flowed into my glass mug, at first producing a ratio of head to liquid of about 18:1.

Virgil’s isn’t bad stuff. The carbonation is a little low for me, and it has a very dark taste to it. It’s microbrewed, all natural, and they take great pains to tell you it isn’t like the stuff made in giant vats. You can taste the difference, and it’s not bad, but it reminds me that the stuff that takes me back isn’t this. The novelty of the gravity-pour keg is pretty overwhelming, though – I wish I could get Coke like this, except for the part about the fire department having to cut me out of the house and load me onto a flatbed truck six months from now. The keg has its downsides: you’re supposed to drink it all (just over a gallon) in eight hours, and I’m the only sweetened soft drink drinker in the house, so that didn’t happen. It also takes up half your fridge, and I have no idea what to do with it when it’s done. Also, spending $20 on a gallon of root beer is sort of ludicrous, considering you can get two 2-liters of Dad’s for maybe $2.50. But you gotta try new things, right?

Anyway, that’s my nostalgia trip for today. And now I must go, because I am inexplicably thirsty.

Categories
general

Rockies – Devil Rays

You’re probably sick of seeing pictures of Coors Field, but we went to the game last night, and my photos are here. Here’s another bulleted list of the details:

  • This game was against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which happens to be John Sheppard’s most favorite subject in the world to talk about that doesn’t have to do with book publishing.
  • While I don’t find this story about Rays’ Elijah Dukes threatening his wife by sending a picture of a gun with his cell phone that hilarious, I do find it hilarious that all of the “targeted” ads on the web page are all ads for cell phones. It’s like they’re saying “and if you want to threaten your wife like Dukes, buy a Blackberry from Verizon!!
  • This was a Friday night game, which meant high energy levels, aka high blood alcohol content.
  • We got there early, partially because of my gimpdom, partially to get a bite to eat first, and partially because the first 5000 fans got a free Brad Hawpe jersey t-shirt. I was thinking that would be handy if I ever had to paint a room or something, but they didn’t give out Barney-purple shirts, just white, so maybe I will keep it in reserve for some future game. (I mean, provided I don’t wash it once and it turns into a GI Joe doll outfit.)
  • We ate at the chophouse place on the northeast corner of the field again. I had a buffalo cheese bratwurst again. I still liked it, but I’m becoming less enthused by that restaurant, because the line and how they put together the food is totally fucked up, and if even three people are ahead of you, it’s like a 20 minute wait. But still, it was good.
  • Sarah got club box seats from work. I thought this just meant we would be sitting in the first deck, case closed. But really, when you get to that level, it has a sealed-in, air-conditioned concourse with fancier food and drinks, nice furniture to sit at, access to the outside patios that circle the outer part of the stadium, and they only let you in if you have club tickets. So that was really nice, especially the air conditioning part, because it was like 90.
  • Our seats were in the second row, section 238. That’s right between third and home. I thought the tickets might not be as good as sitting in the 100-sections, but since we were right up front, they were pretty decent. You also get a little bit of a lift in elevation that makes it easier to see everything.
  • We also had food and drink service from our seats, which was new to me. Some dude ran around and took your orders. I got some pretzel bites, but they were borderline horrible. I should have stuck to nachos, or maybe cracker jack.
  • I saw someone splinter a bat in the first couple of innings, which was neat to see up close. No bat to the beer guy’s head, though. There were still many fly balls in odd places. There was also a fan interference fuckup when someone hit to the right wall, the Rays first base ran to get it, he pretty much had it, and some dumbfuck reached out over the wall to catch it and dropped it. People weren’t happy about that, but at least it wasn’t at Wrigley Field.
  • I forget who pitched for the Rays, but late in the game, ther were some very colossal fielding fuckups by their pitcher. Once something really stupid happened, like someone hit a line drive that bounced in front of the mound, hit the pitcher’s arm, and then dropped to the ground, and it took him like 45 minutes to figure it out and get the ball to first base.
  • Both Atkins and Hawpe hit back-to-back home runs in the first inning. They were both the typical 5280-foot-altered hits where the ball went way the hell up, then picked up additional lift like the second stage of a rocket, and floated out. With four runs in the first inning, it got really lopsided really fast.
  • They did this thing for Frontier airlines between innings, where they use a bungee to shoot a fly ball out and some fan has to catch two of three to get a free ticket to fly anywhere on Frontier (which is probably a lower value than the aforementioned super-shrink t-shirt.) Anyway, they have the dude go back like 100 yards, and the cheerleader types fuck up the bungee and the ball goes like ten yards, three times in a row. So they just gave him the ticket anyway.
  • This drunken whore chick sat right behind us and would not shut the fuck up. She sortof looked like a trashier Mischa Barton type, and had to mention every alcoholic drink she’s ever drank, every female friend she had a major falling out with because guy friends are so much better, and every guy she’s ever fucked. Why does this happen at every game I go to?
  • In the 7th inning, there was this huge chain where all of the bases got loaded, and then people kept hitting in single-base runs, pushing the score up to 9-2.
  • At the top of the 8th, I needed to gimp up the stairs, and the bugs were starting to come out, so we decided it would be nice to watch the game from inside, and slowly work our way toward the exit. We did duck back in at the bottom of the 8th, when there was another three runs.
  • In the top of the ninth, the Rays needed to hit in ten runs to tie it up. That didn’t happen.

Overall, not a bad game. Lopsided, but the Rockies are slowly growing on me, at least while they’re winning a few games. I’m sure that will change when we see them play the Yankees on Tuesday.

Categories
general

On the Road, on crutches

I started rereading On the Road. It’s been a while, and even though I’ve read it a dozen times, I always find myself on vacation or living in a different spot mentioned in the book, and the reread mixes with the firsthand to create something new. I have this old orange-cover paperback edition, the 25th anniversary one, that I bought for $2.49 at that old used bookstore at Third and Jordan, the one with too many books in too small a space and a crazy lady running the place. Anyway, I always swear I bought a new, not-falling-apart edition and then realize I was thinking about Orwell’s 1984. (Although even with the new version, I still read my falling-apart paperback I got at TIS in the summer of 92 for a polysci class that was somewhat mentioned (fictionally, of course) in Summer Rain.

Kerouac was in Denver, of course – that’s how the book starts. And everyone around here is “Kerouac-Kerouac-Kerouac” and/or “Larimer Square-Larimer Square-etc”. Kerouac didn’t live in Larimer Square though, although Neal Cassidy did as a kid, when the place was a wall-to-wall beggar-filled shithole. Now it’s a hip and trendy shopping mall type thing after they bulldozed all of the historic buildings and built martini bars and expensive clothing stores. Still, it’s interesting to hear Kerouac’s descriptions of an old-timey Denver with the same crossroads as the current one. It’s kindof like when I read parts of John Sheppard’s up-and-coming book and dug the stuff about the old Lowry AFB, although it’s all strip malls and condos now.

Speaking of Lowry, I’ve gotta go out there tomorrow to an arthritis clinic. Yes, the foot is still fucked up. On maybe Monday, after my last shot wore away, it was at about the same point as when this all started. So yesterday was the internist and more prednisone for the next 12 days. Today was a podiatrist at the same hospital, and a deeper shot of cortisone into the ankle. Tomorrow is a surprise, because I booked for like mid-July, and they called today and asked if I could come in. So mostly paperwork, prodding, the same stupid questions, but maybe the rheumatologists there have a better idea on a long-term plan for this shit.

Until then, I am so fucking sick of telling this story that I just tell people I’m on crutches because I’m an attention whore. Or because of the dotcom crash. Or global warming. Or George Bush personally came to my apartment and hit me in the ankle with a tire iron. The only problem with that is the person might start talking about dubya and not shut the fuck up. The worst part of this is talking to doctor after doctor after nurse after intern after billing representative about what happened and when I was diagnosed and if I can move it this way and if my great-great-grandparents ate shellfish. Imagine every stupid question you’ve been asked in the last ten years, and then imagine being asked all of them a dozen times a week, and that’s just the forms you have to fill out to see the doctor. I don’t know which one of you got all EFF privacy-fucking-apeshit about health care places implanting an RFID chip in your ass to store all of this, but fuck you very much for stopping that technology. If I had back all of the time I’ve ever spent filling out the same stupid form in doctor’s offices, I’d seriously have another five years of my life back.

Today’s worst moment (other than the giant tentspike needle they put in my ankle joint) was this total bitch of a receptionist who INSISTED I was on an HMO and needed to walk downstairs and get a referral form and then walk backup. I did not have the heart to tell her a) I was in a waiting room full of gimps, all of us with walkers, canes, crutches, wheelchairs, and Rascals. None of us could walk downstairs if a gunman was spraying lead with an AK down the hall. And b) I AM NOT ON AN HMO. THE CARD DID NOT SAY HMO. THE FILE DID NOT SAY HMO. THE PEOPLE AT THE INSURANCE COMPANY DID NOT SAY HMO. LADY, YOU WORK IN A HOSPITAL – GET SOME FUCKING HALDOL IMMEDIATELY.

The good news is that I can mostly walk now. Oh, I couldn’t get any more Vicodin, but maybe that’s a good thing.

Sarah’s uncle was here all week, staying with us. He was taking a class at DU – it’s mostly online, but he came in for this crash course where you’re in lectures from 7am-9pm each day. So we didn’t see a whole lot of him, but he’s a cool guy and we got in a good roadtrip to Colorado Springs for an excellent dinner at the Blue Star, and a day trip out to Idaho Springs, plus a quick spin around the DU campus, which is damn nice. Sarah’s sister Liz and brother-in-law Matthew were also in town yesterday and today, and we’re going to a picnic at Matthew’s. They’re on an Ohio-to-LA car trip for some professorly conference stuff at UCLA, but it’s good to see them for a bit. The only thing that I suddenly realized is that I just about have her family tree down, and I will have to re-memorize various titles, like “Sarah’s sister’s husband” will become “my brother-in-law”. Of course, when I told Sarah last week that she has already become Aunt Sarah because she’s been buying my nephews and niece crap, and she sort of freaked the fuck out over that.

As an aside, I am still not used to the girlfriend => fiancee thing. I mean, I have no problems with being engaged, it’s just when a car dealership or realtor or secretary asks, the first thing that pops out of my mouth is still “girlfriend”. If they ask “married?”, an “almost” sometimes works. Sometimes it’s easier to say wife, and that bothers me less. It’s shorter, doesn’t have the accent, easy to pronounce. Sometimes to fuck with healthcare people, I say partner, and let them wonder if I’m some huge biker dude’s shackjob. We were somewhere, I forget where, and some clerk either said “Mrs. Konrath” or “Sarah Konrath” and we both sort of freaked out. I’m not into the name change thing or the hyphenation. You’re born with a name, you keep it until you die, unless you become a musician or something. It took me long enough to ferret out all of the shit online with my old address, I couldn’t imagine doing it for my name too. Anyway.

Lots of baseball coming up. Sarah got free club seats from work for tomorrow’s game. It’s against the Devil Rays, and provided none of their players shoot their wives or knock up any 17-year-olds in the next 24 hours (which is probably like even money in Vegas sports books) it will be interesting. We also have tickets for the Yankees-Rockies game on Tuesday, although Sarah can’t go because of work. I am reluctant to go dump the spare ticket on StubHub because then I might end up sitting next to some total joker for nine innings. (And no, this one won’t go extra. I’m guessing 24-3.) If you have a good pal that is not a total social leper and needs a seat, I would be willing to work a deal. (Like a hefty discount if they’re willing to not be an annoying fuck and/or take the bat to the head if that happens again.)

Categories
general

Rockies – Astros

So I just got back to seeing the Rockies-Astros game. Rather than try to write this up in any cohesive way, you get a bulleted list:

  • Coors Field is really nice. It does remind me a lot of Miller Stadium in Milwaukee, except if you’re sitting right of the plate, you see a giant mountain range on the horizon.
  • The stadium is literally one block from my apartment. I cross one street, cross another, walk a block, cross a street, there’s the north entrance.
  • I had to gimp in on the cane, but for whatever reason, that meant I did not get searched, while I watched a group of schoolchildren getting wanded.
  • Aside from the typical hot dogs and cracker jack, there’s a microbrew attached to a semi-nice restaurant. I went there (because buying a bunch of to-go carryable food and a gallon of Coke in a giant bucket is a lot less fun when you have to carry it all in one hand) and I got a spicy buffalo and cheddar bratwurst. It wasn’t bad.
  • My seats: extend the line from third to home in that direction, and I was 15 rows up from the wall. If you’re sitting down, the dugout is immediately to your right (I mean right across the aisle immediately) and half of your field of vision (to the left) is the net, but everything to the right is a really good view of the field.
  • Walking down all of the steps to my seat was absolute murder. I knew two things: I could not under any circumstances go to the bathroom, and I would most likely be killed when trying to get out if I stayed the entire nine innings.
  • Over half of the attendees were either geriatric or pediatric.
  • I left the house and it was 60, so I wore a jacket. When I got to my seat, it was very hot and sunny, so I dropped the jacket and cursed the fact that I would be getting horribly sunburned. Seven minutes later, a cloud rolled in, it looked moments from a t-storm, and it was 60. Repeat this 297 more times.
  • The game starts. I am amazed at how young NL players look. When I was a kid, the Astros looked like giants. Now they look like scrawny punks you’d see loitering outside of a 7-Eleven.
  • They seem to change the ball out an insane number of times. I read somewhere it’s because of the humidity. They keep the fresh balls in a humidor.
  • One of the first Colorado hits is a massive home run. Based on what John Sheppard has told me, I assume there will be about 28 more home runs this game, due to the altitude.
  • …Well, except there is a freakish windstorm, and there are bursts of 20-25 mph winds going right at home plate. Hank Aaron could hit a full-on slam to the back wall and have it end up behind the umpire.
  • Because of said winds, at least ten pop fly balls go up, behind the batter, over the net, and land within 20 rows of me. In good health, I probably can’t catch a pop fly if the ball’s painted orange, so I’m somewhat scared shitless since I can’t walk or run, I don’t have a glove, and it’s cloudy out. And given my luck, I absolutely know I will get beaned, and some other fuck will take the ball away from me.
  • Of the women from age 20-40 ate the game, 95% of them have the same exact haircut.
  • There’s a group of grumpy old men a few rows in front of me, all of them taking score on paper. At least one of the vendors knows them on a first-name basis.
  • I really want to root for the Rockies, but they’re fairly pathetic. Houston scores four runs in two innings; the Rockies can’t even hit the ball, and it’s their stadium.
  • A group of women in their early twenties sit a few rows behind me, at about the 5th inning, and they will not shut up. Their overly loud conversations were about the most inane things, and they were so stupid I don’t even remember. But when certain Rockies players came to bat, they would SCREAM AND SCREAM their names. Their first names, only. It was not based on most popular players – I think it was largely based on who they wanted to fuck. I would have assumed they worked at a tanning salon or something. But later I deduce from their excessively loud conversation that they are third-year medical students.
  • The game got worse and worse, and I promised myself that if the Astros got ten points ahead, I would leave.
  • Here’s where it gets interesting – Lance Berkman is at bat for the Astros. He swings, and loses his bat which HITS A BEER GUY IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD. Beer guy hits the deck, Coors is everywhere, and the crew of white-haired old ladies that check your ticket stubs freak the fuck out. They try to stop the game; cops are all over; paramedics jump out of nowhere; everyone is standing up to see if there’s anything cool to see. (The game does not stop, BTW.) One of the old ladies took the bat, and everyone in the section starts chanting “GIVE HIM THE BAT! GIVE HIM THE BAT!” I mean, if you get clocked in the head with a bat, you might as well get to take it home and put it on the bookshelf as a conversation piece, right? Also, everyone in the section started chanting for Berkman to apologize to the guy, and he didn’t. So everyone booed, and only because of the fact that nobody outside of our section could figure out what the fuck was going on, there was no riot.
  • I decide maybe I should root for the Rockies.
  • It looks like it’s about to pour rain, and I feel a drop or two. I also realize that it will take me 45 minutes to climb the stairs to the main level. See above comment about being trampled.
  • Top of the 8th. 6-4 Astros. There’s no way they’re going to pull out of this one. I get up and leave.
  • At home, I get on MLB.com. THEY PULLED IT TOGETHER IN THE LAST INNING AND WON 7-6!!! FUCK!!!
  • From now on, I am not leaving a baseball game, even if it’s 28-1 at the bottom of the ninth and the stadium is on fire.