Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Running around the field in the Metrodome
I vended at the Metrodome from 1984 to 1991. The events I worked there were mostly Twins and Vikings games, but there were some Gopher football games, and some tractor pulls. One time I sold beer at the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty/Grateful Dead show. Vendors are a funny group of people, mostly men, aged 16-60, mostly sports fans, mostly guys that hustle. Vendors are paid by commission only, you don't selll, you don't get paid. You sell a lot, you get a lot of money. I made it through college on the money I got from vending at the Metrodome and being a parking attendant.
One of the perks of vending is you get to get into the stadium before any fans are there. It is an endless sea of blue seats. There might be players on the field and there might be workers around doing things, but vendors don't really have anything to do before the fans show up, so they mill around. It is kind of the same after the game. Vendors hang around picking up "dome cups" colorful plastic cups with player's faces on them. Collect them all. Once a couple of us vendors had a football, and thought after the game it would be fun to run around on the field. We checked out, got our street clothes on, then went back up and down the stairs and ran out onto the field. Two of us lined up for a 20 yard field goal while the third one waited in the stands to catch the ball. I kicked it and it was good. Then there was some roughhousing and running around pretending to be a Viking. The turf is spongier than I would have thought, at least it was in 1989. Eventually a security guard saw us. He started down the steps toward the field saying, "Hey Hey Hey, you guys can't be on the field. Come on now, everybody off the field." The security guards are almost like school teachers at the Metrodome. They have very little clout and aren't respected very much. I remember being totally unafraid of anything those guards could do or say to me. If it had been cops, that's a totally different story. So we ran around a little more and then got off the field. It is a pretty fun memory.
One of the perks of vending is you get to get into the stadium before any fans are there. It is an endless sea of blue seats. There might be players on the field and there might be workers around doing things, but vendors don't really have anything to do before the fans show up, so they mill around. It is kind of the same after the game. Vendors hang around picking up "dome cups" colorful plastic cups with player's faces on them. Collect them all. Once a couple of us vendors had a football, and thought after the game it would be fun to run around on the field. We checked out, got our street clothes on, then went back up and down the stairs and ran out onto the field. Two of us lined up for a 20 yard field goal while the third one waited in the stands to catch the ball. I kicked it and it was good. Then there was some roughhousing and running around pretending to be a Viking. The turf is spongier than I would have thought, at least it was in 1989. Eventually a security guard saw us. He started down the steps toward the field saying, "Hey Hey Hey, you guys can't be on the field. Come on now, everybody off the field." The security guards are almost like school teachers at the Metrodome. They have very little clout and aren't respected very much. I remember being totally unafraid of anything those guards could do or say to me. If it had been cops, that's a totally different story. So we ran around a little more and then got off the field. It is a pretty fun memory.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
December Sucks
December sucks. The year is getting stale and it is a long time until Spring Training. I lived for 23 years in Minnesota. Since I moved away in 1989 I have lived in Seattle, Tucson, New Orleans and now the Bay Area. All places much warmer in winter. When I tell someone in CA that I am from MN, sometimes they will say, "Oh you are from MN, the cold must not bother you." I wonder if someone was from Thailand where people get caned for crimes, if people say to them, "Oh you are from Thailand? Torture must not bother you."
Right now I am wearing pants with flannel on the inside, and 3 shirts and am sitting with my right shin about 5 inches from a space heater. I am thinking of going out to the car and getting my hat. I have heard that in the Nordic pagan religions Hell is a cold place. I am convinced Hell IS a cold place. The end of the universe is something people in the field of thermodynamics talk about. Thermodynamics, as the name suggests talks about heat flow, and entropy. The gist of it is entropy always increases. There is a model for the end of the universe that is called the "heat death of the universe", that everything is equally spread out over it and everything is absolute zero. -278 C. Cold. The interesting thing about absolute zero is it is absolute. All motion stops. December reminds me of the end of the universe and what we gotta do is ride it out and start a new year in January, then we can start counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report.
Right now I am wearing pants with flannel on the inside, and 3 shirts and am sitting with my right shin about 5 inches from a space heater. I am thinking of going out to the car and getting my hat. I have heard that in the Nordic pagan religions Hell is a cold place. I am convinced Hell IS a cold place. The end of the universe is something people in the field of thermodynamics talk about. Thermodynamics, as the name suggests talks about heat flow, and entropy. The gist of it is entropy always increases. There is a model for the end of the universe that is called the "heat death of the universe", that everything is equally spread out over it and everything is absolute zero. -278 C. Cold. The interesting thing about absolute zero is it is absolute. All motion stops. December reminds me of the end of the universe and what we gotta do is ride it out and start a new year in January, then we can start counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The Pisser
When I lived in New Orleans, I met a lot of unusual characters. One guy I call "the Pisser." I used to have a 1973 Ford Econoline van. I bought it in Seattle in 1990 and it helped me move to Tucson then to New Orleans. I loved that van, and it took me and my bands, Beyond Seven and Dog and Pony Show on tour across the nation. It was not pretty and it was not safe, but I never had an accident and after a while I fixed all the problems and it ran pretty good.
At some point I decided that I didn't need the van anymore, so I put an ad in the paper. A guy responded. He played trumpet on a riverboat that went on cruises up and down the Mississippi. For some reason I went over to his house. He had 3 70's Ford Mavericks and 2 70's Ford vans. Obviously he was short a van. He also had an 302 engine and C4 transmission that I wanted for my Ford Fairlane, so we worked out a trade, I would give him my van, he would give me the engine and have the transmission rebuilt.
One time I was over there and he came to the door in his underwear and I could see behind him a young man in his bed. I guess he was a gay trumpet player, that's cool, do what you gotta do. After he got my van, he decided he didn't like it and eventually resold it. His reasoning was this: He liked to go on road trips and while on the trips he wanted to have a van with side doors that swung out, my side door was a sliding door. He wanted the doors to swing out so that he could stop on the side of the road and pee out of the van. I guess he was modest and didn't want the people driving by seeing him pee and the swinging doors would shield him from view. I imagine what a driver would see is a van with a door open and a stream of liquid coming out of the van. I can't really figure out if he was thinking of kneelingin the van and peeing or standing on the ground outside the van but still using the doors to block the view of cars driving by. Why couldn't he use a rest area anyway? After this incedent, my wife and I always refered to him as "the Pisser".
At some point I decided that I didn't need the van anymore, so I put an ad in the paper. A guy responded. He played trumpet on a riverboat that went on cruises up and down the Mississippi. For some reason I went over to his house. He had 3 70's Ford Mavericks and 2 70's Ford vans. Obviously he was short a van. He also had an 302 engine and C4 transmission that I wanted for my Ford Fairlane, so we worked out a trade, I would give him my van, he would give me the engine and have the transmission rebuilt.
One time I was over there and he came to the door in his underwear and I could see behind him a young man in his bed. I guess he was a gay trumpet player, that's cool, do what you gotta do. After he got my van, he decided he didn't like it and eventually resold it. His reasoning was this: He liked to go on road trips and while on the trips he wanted to have a van with side doors that swung out, my side door was a sliding door. He wanted the doors to swing out so that he could stop on the side of the road and pee out of the van. I guess he was modest and didn't want the people driving by seeing him pee and the swinging doors would shield him from view. I imagine what a driver would see is a van with a door open and a stream of liquid coming out of the van. I can't really figure out if he was thinking of kneelingin the van and peeing or standing on the ground outside the van but still using the doors to block the view of cars driving by. Why couldn't he use a rest area anyway? After this incedent, my wife and I always refered to him as "the Pisser".
Monday, December 13, 2004
Paycheck
I can't say it would make my favorite movie list, but Paycheck was a pretty good movie. Ben Affleck plays an engineer who has his memory erased after he does a big job. Then there is a lot of chasing and bad guys trying to get him and trick him into giving them things. In one scene the bad guys have hired a double of his girlfriend Uma Thurman to get something from him. Ben figures something is up, and to test her, he says, "If you are my girlfriend, what is my favorite baseball team?" The imposter doesn't know. But in walks Uma and bitchslaps the bitch and says, "That would be the RED SOX!" I think it is funny that Affleck would try to get the Red Sox into the plot of a scifi movie. Why not?
Monday, December 06, 2004
Jason Giambi
It seems almost every blog I read has a post about Jason Giambi today. I might as well chime in. When Jason was on the A's, he WAS the A's. There hasn't been quite the same kind of leader for this team since. Miggy was a leader in a funny kooky sort of way. Jason was just the guy. To think that his the-guyness was steroid-induced is hard to take as an A's fan. What I think we should all take home from this lesson is that steroids bring shame to a great game. It shames me a little to think I was rooting for that guy. I wonder what we'd be saying if they had some wonder drug that everyone took that had no bad side-effects? I guess chemicals that enhance athletic performance are just going to get better and better, and harder and harder to detect. Maybe this scandal will begat a return of small-ball in a big way to everyone in the major leagues. No one thinks bunts and hit and runs are steroid-induced.
