Potpourri 13

Ahh, the Potpourri is back!

The Cubs Game

It was interesting; my friends Brian and Kevin Prenoveau are brothers that are both getting married this year. So, to make things easy, the twosome had a joint bachelor party in Chicago over Memorial Day Weekend, and as part of the weekend, they decided to catch a day game over at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs.

But, instead of just going to the game--sure, that DOES sound too easy, doesn't it?--they wanted to do it up (low fuck-around quotient) so they got a rooftop party set up. How does it work, you ask? First off, bring some cash. $140 is the price of admission, and for that, you get to drink all the Miller Lite you want for the first seven innings of the game, as well as eat your proverbial ass off, with burgers, brats and dogs being served up starting 30 minutes before game time and running till about half an hour after the game is over. Plus, the rooftop we were on was maybe 100 feet from the right-field wall, overlooking the entire stadium. I'll admit, cool vantage point, but was it $140 cool? Well, probably not, but as an experience, it was pretty sweet.

Not so sweet--the frat-party atmosphere. Basically, each rooftop party has about five individual groups that have to share the rooftop plus the bleachers set up on the roof where you can watch the game...and, as you probably guessed, about 90% of the people up there were guys. At least three of the five parties on our rooftop were bachelor parties, so naturally it was a big ol' sausage party. I was cool with that, but there were some wasted muthafuckas hangin' out by the 7th inning, that's for sure. My memories of frat parties from UVA came rushing back in a heartbeat.

The only other big thing I noticed, this being my third trip to Chicago? I think that Chicago is a pretty diverse town, and my friend Terry "Twisted Metal" McDonnell lives not far from big Middle Eastern and Jewish neighborhoods, not to mention an area that seemed like Little Thailand to the uninitiated. But, the area where Wrigley is, as well as the fans that were situated at the rooftop parties, in the stands at Wrigley and in the streets before and after the game were shockingly white. I almost couldn't believe how lily the crowd was at the game...I have been to a game in Milwaukee, and even in FUCKING MILWAUKEE, it wasn't as white a crowd as it was at this particular Cubs game. Does the minority population not support the Cubs?

I'll tell you what they DO support:

Peach Fucking Pie

It's barbecue season, but most folks don't associate a good tailgate with a baseball game. In general, people like to leave tailgating for football season, which is odd, because anytime you've got to commute to a sporting contest you should be thinking about putting meat over fire while chillin' in a stadium chair next to your car.

Enter, then, an idea for a recent Nationals game (whoops, sorry, that would be the FIRST-PLACE Washington Nationals...too bad I'm a Yankees fan) that came together when I watched the stars align from my perch overlooking downtown Rockville recently. My friend Tricia works for XM Radio and she made an offer to me about a month ago for an XM exec's parking pass in one of the RFK Stadium lots anytime I want to drive to a game. Parking spot: check.

My friend Dre mentioned to me that through work, she has access to some freebies whenever she has some advance notice through work. Dre knocked down four tickets so now we had a free parking spot AND some free tickets. Check.

My friend Gordon "The Professional" Stokes and I decided that we needed to get a grill for tailgate season, so he stopped by Wal-Mart and picked up Smokey Joe, a hibachi grill (a charcoaler about a quarter of the size of a regular charcoal grill) that we would use for our 2-to-6-person cooking needs. Retail value: $30. Grill--check.

Finally, I checked the weather for the weekend--Saturday's forecast called for partly-cloudy skies, 75°, low humidity. In other words, perfect. I brought along some dogs, marinated chicken, Mountain Dew, and my XM radio for tunes; Gordon brought the beans, the football, the chips & salsa and Smokey Joe; Dre brought the free tickets, the beer and, in a stunning turn of events, a peach pie. Dre is that rare combination--beautiful, loves sports, and is a self-professed baker. Friends, I don't even like pie, and Dre made a pie that even three hours after it was pulled out of the oven still tasted oven-fresh and oven-hot...it was so good that we started offering some to passers-by in the parking lot, all of whom gave looks back to her that seemed to say

"I know I'm already married...but, would you marry me anyway?"

Man, the day came together nicely. After a late bailout, we even found a fourth person to fill out all of our tickets. Everything worked out, and the Nats won the game 7-3. Now, sometimes things don't work out at all, say for example

Escalators...Anywhere

The Washington Post published an article over the weekend regarding the sick amount of cash that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (also known here in DC as just Metro) is spending on maintaining its nearly 30-year-old underground subway network, which is some parts Metro stations and overhead but is more importantly Metro trains and how much WMATA is blowing on the shoddy workmanship when it comes to the cars themselves.

One of WMATA's other big costs? The shitty fucking escalators that supposedly are used to help riders get from street level to station and vice versa, but more correctly are used to make regular riders break out into laughter every time they get to an escalator and find that they are not working. Is there anything more comical than watching the two guys working on a broken escalator for days at a time, unable to figure out what has made the escalator break down in the first place? (Note: it is simply a requirement that exactly two slightly overweight white guys are working on an escalator, one actually inside the escalator and one guy overlooking the operation. The next time you see this, you will break out into maniacal laughter, I promise.)

Yes, there IS something more comical than watching those two idiots trying to fix the damned thing: escalators in general. See, everywhere I have ever regularly visited that had escalators--Freddie Mac, where I used to work; any mall in this country; Metro; airports--ALWAYS HAS BROKEN ESCALATORS. Escalators, by their very nature, are built to break down. Period, point-blank. Escalators are always breaking down, and given what looks like a very simple design, why the fuck is that? We're talking about metallic steps that fold into a metal platform, rinse, repeat! But they are always breaking down! I dare you, I fuckin' double dare you, to come up with another invention built to break down as often as escalators do. They simply don't work!

What's even stranger about escalators is that I have never been on an escalator when they have broken down. Do you know anyone that has? That's been riding an escalator from the bottom level of Tysons Corner Mall and, halfway up, the escalator breaks down on them? I'll bet my bottom dollar that you, or anyone you know, hasn't. What does this mean? That 99% of the time, escalators break down when you turn them off after a long day, or when you turn them on. Okay, sometimes maybe a guy drops his Blackberry and as he's reaching down to grab it, his coat gets caught and whammo, the thing breaks down. But, in general, I'll bet they break down just from getting up to speed when they are first turned on...and, why would any sane human being rely on technology that is built to fail?

Wait a minute...why am I busting my ass every day when maybe the country's perfect job (oh, besides La-Z-Boy Test Engineer, still America's best job) is right in front of me? I can see it now--

Justin Bell, Escalator Repair Specialist. Now, all I need is a wingman.

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

30-cent Wing Night at Hard Times Cafe: Opening Weekend
Terry's futon: $9.50 Show
Potential for Pistons/Spurs series ("It's a final! Pistons 70, Spurs 64"): Matinee
Too much bacon, not enough friends: Rental
Any magazine (this month's Esquire) that celebrates Donald Rumsfeld as a "great American man": Hard Vice

bellview--i love to nibble

Potpourri 13