War Has Been Declared
This weekend was Jen and my first wedding anniversary. October 28th was Sunday and we spent it at home hanging out watching football and relaxing. That is pretty typical for us.
I went to the grocery store in the morning to pick up some stuff. When I got back to unload the car, I noticed something in our driveway. Not quite believing that it was what I thought it was, I walked over for a better look. Sure enough, there was an unrolled, flattened condom sitting in my driveway. I don’t know where the rest of you live, but let’s just say that this isn’t a normal occurrence in my neighborhood. Except, that occasionally when the neighbor’s kids are around for a weekend (the parents are divorced and the dad doesn’t have them all the time) strange bits of contraband end up strewn about my driveway because the kid’s room overlooks it.
In the past, it was about 20 plastic tips from the end of cheap cigars. The kinds of cigars that tend to be hollowed out and filled with something else. A certain something else that I know I smelled one day when I was walking from my garage to the door to my house. It smelled like the Grateful Dead and Black Crowes were having a burnfest in the next door neighbor’s house.
Back to Sunday.
After two decent football games where both the Browns and Jen’s Colts won, I started making dinner. As we sat down to eat, we started hearing clicking from the area of our kitchen sink. I didn’t really know what it was, but we were eating our anniversary dinner, so I just assumed that maybe some of the pots and pans that I had used to cook dinner were settling in the kitchen sink or something. The clicking continued. We cleaned up from dinner and as I was finishing the dishes, Jen took the trash to the garage. When she got back she told me that there were over 20 coins sitting underneath the window that overlooks our kitchen sink.
This means that the neighbor’s kids were intentionally throwing change at our window to try and get some kind of reaction from me. It also means that they probably threw the unrolled condom on my driveway to try and piss me off or embarrass me. By this point it was about 9:00 PM on Sunday night and I didn’t really want to go talk to my neighbors about it, so we watched some TV and went to bed. I didn’t clean up any of the stuff from my driveway because I thought that by not cleaning it up I could send a message to those kids.
I am not sure what message I thought that was going to send.
So, I left the stuff in the driveway. I went to work on Monday and when I got home the condom was gone. And then I realized. The landscapers had been to our house and probably cleaned up the condom.
Now I am mad. I am mad at those kids. I am mad at myself for not just cleaning up the garbage. I am embarrassed that the landscapers found THAT in my driveway and felt compelled to clean it up. So just try me again you little stoner bitches. I will find a way to get revenge even if it is just telling on you to your dad.
The best idea I had was to make a sign, put it on a stick with some tape and somehow stick it to the outside of THEIR window saying something like, “Do you think you are funny?” How creepy would that be? You open the shades to throw more change at my house and there is a message to you stuck on the second floor window staring you in the face.
I am taking suggestions that are non-violent and won’t get me arrested. I will probably not take any of them, but I am sure you can come up with some funny ones.
David Chase is a Belittling Ass
The story is now a couple months old, but David Chase is now talking about the Sopranos finale and all the talk that it caused after sending the show out with a black screen in the middle of a Journey song.
. . . And mostly Chase wonders why so many viewers got so worked up over the series’ non-finish.
“There WAS a war going on that week, and attempted terror attacks in London,” says Chase. “But these people were talking about onion rings.”
I can’t tell you how much I HATE when someone pulls the “well there are more important things going on in life other than this piece of art that I created” in response to criticism. David Chase ought to be ashamed of himself for denigrating his fans like that.
The thing of it is that dissecting the final episode of the Sopranos and coming up with wild theories and looking for hidden meanings is not something that causes all other worries in life to stop. It isn’t a scenario where the Sopranos finale and news about the war in Iraq are mutually exclusive. Being a Sopranos fanboy doesn’t mean that you aren’t paying attention to other stuff going on in the world.
It is just a cheap, defensive ploy by an artist that doesn’t like the criticism that his final episode received. So, sorry if you can’t handle a little picking apart by some of your more vociferous fans, David, but this is your lot in life when you have the most popular television show in the history of HBO. Nobody feels sorry for you, and you really shouldn’t belittle the people who made you just because they disagreed with your artistic vision.
Bill Maher Kicks Out 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists
Irregardlessly of how you feel politically, most sane people will agree that the World Trade Center wasn’t brought down with explosives. Bill Maher said that the 9/11 conspiracy theorists need to have their heads checked or something like that in September. They decided to try to take over his show and the lesson to be learned is that you shouldn’t mess with a comedian who has a microphone. I think Maher did admirably and even his final joke was effective if slightly hackneyed.
Paul Byrd Scandal: A Bulleted List
I wrote about how there is no curse on the Cleveland Indians and no sooner do I hit save, and publish it to the web, when news comes out of the ongoing steroid investigation that Indians’ pitcher Paul Byrd allegedly spent over $24,000 on HGH and needles. I don’t know what to say about this, but I figured I would throw a bullet point list together to see what I can come up with.
Paul Byrd Bullet Point List; Now Featuring Occasional Sarcasm!
- There is no way that the Fenway faithful have enough time to get their glue and glitter together in time to make Paul Byrd a major topic of their signs at tonight’s game.
- In all fairness to Paul Byrd, how much of that $24,000 + was spent on shipping? We can’t possibly count all those shipping charges against him. So, wasn’t it really closer to $23,000?
- I am sure that everybody has suspected Paul Byrd of using performance enhancers for a while now. I mean, what with his 82 MPH fastball, it is clear to see that he is using something.
- I am sure the Fenway faithful will take it easy on Byrd. It isn’t like they chanted “Wife Beater” at Will Cordero when he was a member of the Cleveland Indians a mere two years after they cheered him on as a member of their beloved club.
- I am sure that having a key member of the Indians’ playoff run ensconced in a drug scandal hours before game 7 starts won’t have too negative an effect on the relatively young Indians’ team.
- On the bright side, this distraction will surely take the heat off of Travis Hafner who has been hitless in the CLEANUP SPOT over the past four games.
- I wonder if this means that Paul Byrd won’t be available to pitch a few innings out of the bullpen if Jake Westbrook falters as the starter this evening?
- Paul Byrd is known for his self-deprecation about how he has to deal junk to get anyone out because he doesn’t have any zip left on any of his pitches. I have no idea how to even think about those jokes that he tells about himself now.
- I wonder if Paul Byrd knows Rodney Harrison. Is it like an unofficial fraternity of degenerates?
- Even if the Indians find a way to win tonight’s game against the Red Sox the Indians will probably have to find someone to pitch in the fourth spot of the rotation. I can’t imagine that the Indians would want this kind of distraction hanging over their heads even though the transgressions allegedly occurred before Byrd was ever a member of the Indians.
- Don’t you just love following sports in Cleveland?
It Doesn’t Take a Curse
I haven’t written anything about the Cleveland Indians mostly because I have just been gripping too tightly on just about everything within reach. Now, after beating up the Yankees convincingly, and catching fire in game two to take three in a row from the Red Sox in the ALCS, the Indians have dropped two in a row to allow a game seven to occur tonight in Boston.
While some of my friends are suggesting new names for this breakdown over the last two games, I have refused to wallow in any sort of negativity. There hasn’t been an event in this series yet that screams to me of some imaginary curse. Even in Cleveland’s history, “the curse of Rocky Colavito” seems to work in a very loose, non-specific way. Almost to the point where I really don’t buy the fact that there is a curse at all. Sure, Indians teams of the 90’s lost in the World Series, but then again when the Braves beat the Indians in 1995 that was the only time they would win one. The point being that nobody has a “right” to win championships.
On top of that, I just can’t call what is going on during the ALCS a curse. The Indians beat the Yankees convincingly enough that they were able to line up their pitching rotation. They put C.C. Sabathia out there as the number one starter, just like he should have been. They put Fausto Carmona out there as the second starter, just like he should have been. They have gone to the bullpen pretty effectively with few exceptions. They have had some good bounces. They have had some bad bounces, like last night with all those infield singles. There has been some horrendous umpiring behind the plate on balls and strikes, but for the most part it has been going both ways. Boston might have lost game three in Cleveland partially because of umpiring the balls and strikes. Cleveland might have lost game six partially because of umpiring balls and strikes.
None of it matters, though. Tonight the Indians have one more chance to go to the World Series. Boston has momentum and home field advantage, but that is where the advantages stop. The Red Sox have Matsuzaka going, and the Indians have Westbrook. Who has the advantage? That’s debatable. It could be even, or either pitcher could give up runs in droves. Either way, I guess my argument would just be that there is a fine line between winning and losing in Championship situations. It doesn’t take a curse. We will see what happens when these two guys take the mound to see who can work the counts, and drive in runs. Whoever does that more effectively will win the game, despite a front-office move that occurred in 1960.
And keep those heads high Indians fans. This series has lined up exactly how the Indians wanted it to line up. Nobody gets 100% of the results they want, but to get the chance you want is another thing altogether. There hasn’t been an injury like Kenny Lofton sliding into first base, or Dave Burba blowing out his elbow in the middle of a game like has happened to the Indians in the past. The players who should be out there giving the Indians their best shot are out there on the field and they are doing everything they can to stand tall. That is all you can ask for in the playoffs, really.
Once The Movie
I dragged my feet getting out to my local indie theater to see this movie and now it isn’t showing anywhere around here. I am waiting for it to come out on DVD, but it doesn’t have any sort of release date anywhere that I can find. Until I get a chance to see it, I do have the music. Watch this movie trailer / video for the song “Falling Slowly” and tell me you wouldn’t be interested in seeing the movie. What a beautiful song.
Trite Airport Nightmare Volume Eleventy-Four Thousand and Two
(This is part two of a saga that started here in part one.)
So where did I leave you? Oh yeah. I was waiting for a 3:40 flight. We didn’t make it. We went off to spend the last $14 in the monumental $28 that they gave us for the day in the airport to kill enough time to bridge until the 6:30 PM flight which was already delayed until 7:19 PM.
They started boarding the 6:30 PM 7:19 PM flight and it appeared that all hope was lost. They called a few names and let some people on, when the desk guy who proclaimed “all stand-by’s have been cleared for the flight.” I didn’t understand and assumed this meant that there were no seats left and as Jen and I got up, I was all upset. She walked to the ticket lady and basically told me that that meant we could go get on the flight.
Jen, understanding the greek lingo of the dummies who work for Delta walks us up to the ticket scanner lady. We handed our tickets to the ticket lady as precious time was expiring and she scanned our standby tickets only to tell us that we hadn’t been cleared for the flight.
To the ticket counter where a large black man with the vocal inflection of a black woman saying “OH NO YOU DIDN’T” was waiting to “help” us. He told us that he didn’t have us on his standby list. I told him that they had told us that we would automatically be rolled over to each standby after each flight. He basically told me that I was stupid, and wrong and that I should have checked into the desk with him sometime earlier in the day. Nice to know that I was misled by one of his coworkers and he had no problem taking their error out on the customer.
After fiddling with the computer, he looked at us and said, “I don’t have time for all this.” He yelled across to the ticket lady and told us to just go ahead. He said, “Hey let these two go on the plane.”
We walked through toward the ticket scanning lady and as we did so, we passed three passengers who were supposed to be on the plane, but had gotten bumped off of it because they hadn’t made it to the gate in time. In essence, we were taking their seats.
As the effeminate attitudinal man yelled “Let those people go” the three late passengers told the ticket lady that that meant THEY could go. I interrupted and told them no no no, the man was talking about me and my wife and we walked out to the plane.
CONFUSED YET? This is RIDICULOUS!
So Jen and I walk to the plane and as we are getting there, the three passengers who had been late are now following us to the plane. Jen and I get up to the entrance and the attendant tells us to go ahead and sit wherever there is an open seat. Keep in mind that we didn’t have seating assignments for the flight. Hell we didn’t even have boarding passes at all for this particular flight that we were now walking into. Now it is a game of musical chairs. Make sure you have a seat when the music stops. Jen is first onto the plane. I am right behind her. She passes the first row, where there is an open seat. I have a flash of strategery and figure that I better take that open seat, and Jen is first in line, so she will definitely get some kind of seat back there.
I was in some kind of “Get me the fuck out of Atlanta” kind of mental zone at this point.
The plan worked perfectly. I was seated in the first row and Jen was sitting somewhere behind me, probably about ten rows back. Now there are the three folks walking into the plane behind us and they want to kill the mother-effers who just took their seats on the plane.
It turns out that there are two seats left and this is a group of three people who traveled together. A nice man decides to volunteer his seat to let them all on the flight and he walks off the plane. So now we have a situation where Jen and I are sitting on this plane with a bunch of people who hate us. Hell, if I were them I would hate us too.
Then the Delta employees failed to understand that this guy volunteered to get off of the plane and another employee walks onto the plane and makes an announcement that they want Jen to come up front. I was sitting in the front seat and proclaimed that she is my wife and if you take her off, you are going to waste a seat on the flight and that the other dude volunteered to get off of the plane. This finally seems good enough for the Delta employees and Jen and I fly back to Akron Canton at 7:19 PM, more than 8 hours after our originally scheduled flight was supposed to leave.
There was no incident on the plane, but talk about potential tension between customers. Delta did their share to make sure that a potential powder keg was on board that day. On top of that, I was a little bit upset that we had been sent onto a flight without being properly assigned to seats in the fancy flight computer system. All I could think of as we took off was that if something had happened to that flight, it might have taken them days to deduce the fact that we were on that flight and not the one leaving at 9:40 PM that we had assigned seats for.
To top off the whole miserable experience, our baggage was locked away in a Delta baggage room that had no attendant at the Akron Canton airport. We had to wait for someone to come back after loading up the carousel with all the bags from the flight we had just arrived on. It turns out that they keep the staffing really low at Akron Canton and most people multi-task to the nth degree. So the baggage handlers also handle the baggage offices. They handle the loading and unloading of the plane including the ticket taking. They shuttle planes around on the runway. Any one employee can do any of those tasks.
I guess I don’t have a problem with that until they are so understaffed that I can’t get access to some bags that arrived about 6 hours before I was lucky enough to get there.
Some final thoughts.
Eff Delta. I will go out of my way to NEVER EVER fly with them again. I refuse so much so that when Jen suggested I take out some of my rage on their customer service people to try and get us some vouchers, I said no. Why? Because I don’t care how much money they give me. I am not going to fly anywhere with them ever again. They screwed us out of our original flight. They offered us a single ticket when we were clearly traveling together. They only gave us $28 for the two of us to eat two meals in the airport. Their potential solution was a 10 hour delay. On top of all that, there planes feel old. Eff Delta.
Eff Akron Canton airport. I wanted to like my experience there. I wanted it to be a nice cheap alternative to Hopkins international. For my troubles I get bad service, a wacked out shuttle driver from the parking lot, horrible security gates, uncomfortable terminals, and finally, multi-tasking knuckle-draggers who aren’t particularly good at any one thing, especially customer service.
Eff Atlanta airport. The food is too expensive. There are far too many people there. They charge for wireless internet access. They didn’t have a store that carried an iPod data cable. They change gates every five minutes for every flight. Eff them hard.
Really, though, I had a nice time on vacation. It was just the travel day that sucked. Thanks to my wife for putting up with me on what could have been one of the most miserable days of my life.
ESPN’s Bias is Irritating
Even after the Indians go out and beat the New York Yankees, they can’t have top billing. Instead of showing the winners of this ALDS series, ESPN.com decides to go with this.
Thanks ESPN. The fact that you made the loser the bigger story is just typical. I am sure Fox is just moaning that they couldn’t have a Yankees vs. Red Sox ALCS. Well too bad.
Eff the Yankees (Clap Clap Clap-Clap-Clap)
I will have a lot more to say about this tomorrow. As for tonight, the secret to success was arriving home and pounding four Magic Hats to keep my sanity intact as the Tribe beats the Yankees in four. It is whatever story you want to call it. David vs. Goliath. Whatever. The TBS sportscasters decided it was a key opportunity to just blow on and on about Joe Torre and A-Rod in the face of a few young Tribe players getting the best of the best team that money can buy.
Eff TBS. Eff the Yankees. Go Tribe. Let’s hope for an ALCS to remember with the Tribe getting the best of the Red Sox too. They are probably better than the Yankees, so the Tribe has their work cut out for them.
Good night now!
Trite Airport Nightmare Volume Eleventy-Four Thousand and One
I know that it is a completely used up topic in the realm of comedy. Airport jokes about how they call the building the “terminal” are about as old as jokes about peanuts or airplane food. But I am in the midst of a complete and total airport nightmare right now and I don’t care.
Jen and I spent the weekend in South Carolina. Now, it appears that we are going to have more than a little trouble getting home. We are flying in and out of the Akron-Canton airport by way of Atlanta and that is where our problems begin. Atlanta closed the airport this morning for two hours due to fog. I was thinking that we would be ok because we had some time to make our flight and even if we missed it, I knew that there were other flights throughout the day. So now I bring you a bullet list of bullshit.
- Our flight from Charleston landed late into Atlanta at about 11:00 AM
- We went quickly to try and catch our flight at gate C10 with a boarding time of 11:10 and by the time we got to C10 at 11:12 it had been moved to C36, which happened to be the last gate at the end of the C Terminal.
- We didn’t make it to C36 in time to make the flight.
- We were instructed to go to C22 for re-assignment where we learned that we had not already been assigned to a new flight. This represents precious moments that were missed in getting us on one of the subsequent flights.
- They told us that all flights were sold out. . . until 9:40 PM.
- We were welcome to fly standby on the 1:40, 3:40, and 6:40
- If we lasted that long we would have seats on the 9:40 airplane. What a bargain! We missed a flight and it was completely not our fault and then they offer us a flight about 10 hours after our original flight was supposed to leave.
- We show up at the gate for the 1:40 to go standby and by the time our name was called they offered us only one ticket.
- Minutes before they went to us standby people, they denied their “volunteers” and sent them back on the plane.
- I suggested to the Delta employee that they should call back one of their “volunteers” and give us one more ticket so we could go on the flight.
- Said Delta employee looked at me annoyed and said, “Sir, it doesn’t work that way.”
- Craig spews expletives slightly under breath as they give away the one seat to another standby passenger.
So, now I am sitting here waiting to see if we can get on the 3:40 flight on standby. Hopefully they will have two tickets for us this time.
I understand that this is the nature of flying when there has been a bad weather delay of any kind, but I don’t quite understand why things don’t work “that way.” If they can get a volunteer to give up a seat willingly to travel later for the small cost of a voucher that puts my wife and me back on our travel schedule, why is that such a big deal? It isn’t like we just overslept and didn’t make it to the airport on time. We shouldn’t have to just accept the 10 hour delay.
On top of all this is the fact that I am almost assuredly going to miss some portion of the Indians playoff game tonight, which starts at 7:30 PM. As someone who was supposed to be back in the Cleveland area by about lunchtime, I find that completely and utterly unacceptable.
So it goes. They will all pay the price. I almost exclusively fly Continental out of Cleveland whenever I leave town. The people losing my business are Delta, Akron-Canton Airport, and Atlanta airport. All have done a horrendous job thus far in helping me get this thing resolved.
I don’t think I will even bother to ask for vouchers because I would be very very unlikely to ever use them after this disgusting experience.
