Tuesday, July 19, 2005

The Odyssey

So before I begin describing the past events I would just like to say that it is currently 4:53 in the am on tuesday morning and I have not slept in 21 hours. I should also warn the reader that this will be a very long post

We will begin a week ago with the bethel minnesota bar scene. So after work myself another dude and 5 chicks head out to wreck havoc on the local watering holes. Our first stop is the dugout where we enjoy $7 pitchers of miller lite and watch the regulars play bingo around the bar. There were two highlights, both involving meat. The first was the larry burger. I ate half of someone's and it was incredible rivalled only by the billy goat double cheese in the category of unbelievably good tavern burgers. The second was when a man walked in with a cardboard box filled with a potpurri of meat products and anounced 1 for $2 or 3 for $5. Curious I looked at some sliced meat and found it to be the most suspect looking grey meat I have ever seen. All in all good place, if I don't crash hard following work today I will enjoy one for dinner I'm sure. Upon leaving the dugout we strolled on down to the vanishing point, which was interesting as it had younger customers, all men I believe and one attractive barmaid. We saddled up and discovered that beer could be had for $1 a glass. Not bad. Played a little pool, and I actually played remarkably well for me. Especially when I had caroline line up my shots and I subsequently hit the ball without looking where anything would go, was 2/2 in fact. The barmaid was funny as she gave us 30 free plays on the jukebox in an obvious attempt to keep the young women around and gave us the rundown on their various weekly specials. Not a bad night, didn't get very drunk at all and had some good talking with charlie and caroline, and then with everyone while playing pool.

We will now jump ahead to the really big shew (or show to those who don't know of ed sullivan's show). The talent show to be more exact. On thursday we had half a day and then after various games and such a talent show was put on. I demurred from displaying any talent but the quality of the acts was by no means meager because of my absence. The first talent was a bet rather than a talent. The lousiana fellow Ross (I will discuss him much more to come) had a bet that he could drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up. We decided this would provide the perfect backdrop for the show. His strategy was interesting; he chugged a lot of milk early on and used a sort of direct and simple logic, which was that because cake made him thirsty for milk, whenever he got stuck he would have some cake. The other acts were good. A fellow named kyle (who incidentally plays for sub zero) sang and played the guitar for a song he had written called room for improvement. It was funny to look around and see all the young ladies in attendance studiously paying attention to what was a quite decent performance. The piece de resistance of the show though was our resident lesbian kathy dressing as a man and putting on a sort of strip show dealy. She painted on a goatee and had various costumes picked out and ready for use in her two different dressing rooms (I'm still not sure why she needed both of them). This was possibly the most surreal experience of my life. Kathy is very upfront about her sexual orientation, and I personally have no issue with it, but it was a little bizarre to sit and watch her go through her performance, which was admittedly not too bad, because it had this sort of "YOU WILL BE COMFORTABLE WITH THIS" vibe. At random times she would try to draw audience members into the show with mixed results. But the best was when she tried to get Ross into the show (I should mention that there has been a bit of tension there) and he twenty minutes into a gallon of milk demurred muttering rather loudly "Milk". The crescendo of the show was at the end when Kathy and several others were line dancing in front and I sort of realized the absolute surrealness. You had a tame (not taken too far) strip show going on that had gone into the realm of country line dancing acted out by a lesbian posing as a man who at this point was wearing a white sleeveless shirt (one vulgar term for it is wife-beater) that shall we say wasn't quite thick enough, in front of an audience that was unsettled to various degrees, all with Ross on the side really suffering through the milk. I nearly lost it when all the individual elements sort of came together in my head and shed many tears laughing at the absurdity of it all. I really wish I could convey what I felt better. Anyway by the end of the show and around the 40 minute mark Ross went outside to try and throw up with about a 1/3 of the gallon left. I followed and was treated to an amazing sight. Ross who is about 210 pounds was grasping with two hands a small sapling for support that was nearly buckling from the weight and yelling at the milk demon to get out. Sort of a self-exorcism. Phrases commonly used were "Get Out of Me!" and "It hurts bad!" with the truest louisianan accent you could ever wish for.

Ross never did throw up and we subsequently all piled in 2 suburbans and 2 minivans and headed for the black hills. The trip out there was relatively uneventful, but in the end we arrived in the Sheridan Lake area at 430 in the morning and after many attempts to find everyone else our car just crashed at squirrel campground, was quite nice to feel the cool air and the smell of the pines, not to mention being able to see the milky way. Charlie (the able dancer from before who I mentioned) and I chose not to sleep and read by the dock of the marina for a while, watched the sunrise from the hill, and went searching again for everyone else at 630 in the morning. We didn't find them. When we got back we had breakfast and noticed one of the fans go by. After blocking off their way back we met Jared our boss and then the door to the minivan opened and Ross still in his sleeping bag with sunglasses yelled, "Where the hell ya'all been?" This was funny not only because of Ross but because he had obviously been awakened by Jared at an early hour to go looking for someone or something, a theme that would be repeated every morning of the trip.

So I enjoyed Friday on essentially zero sleep, I caught about 40 4 second naps in the car on the way as I'd lean on my hand, fall asleep, my hand would fall away, and I'd awaken as my head suddenly dropped. They say that not sleeping is like having a .08 blood alcohol level, they do not lie. This wasn't a problem in general except when we went to Rapid City. I should note that while people in Florence may say that they "live in the shadow of the dome" (which is a dome to the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore) but Rapid City denizens can claim to "live in the shadow of the big brontasaurus statue on a hill" We were treated to a lecture by the forest service in a large air conditioned garage, and while it was interesting, going into the history, ecology, and management of the black hills I discovered an interesting phenomenon. While I was for the most part awake, there was about 5 minutes where for whatever reason blood was diverted from my brain to a different region of my body. Rather than being an exciting sensation it just made me really, really tired. I was quite relieved when it went away. In the end I was up for about 43 hours straight without any sleep more than 10 minutes, and no more than 15 minutes total.

The next day, Saturday, we went and saw crazy horse, was cool but at this point not really worth the price of admission, went to Sylvan lake which was just about the coolest lake I've been to. Has lots (I originally spelled lots as louds) of climbable rock both in and around the lake. You can jump off any number of ledges ranging from 7 ft. (what I did) to perhaps 30 ft. (what other people did). We then went the needles which are huge stones that tower above the rode. I climbed one in flipflops in what would be a weekend of poor footwear choices. Amidst all the phalluses there was one monolith that was actually yonic in nature, which was refreshing. We continued went up to a lookout where the white suburban that I rode in and drove wouldn't start. Jared the amazingly astute person that he is removed the gas cap and put it back on and then the car started, apparently vapor lock. We continued onto windcave which is the 3rd largest, and possibly soon to be 2nd because they keep discovering new passages, in the states and is where the local native people believed bison emanated from. We then drove the wildlife loop in custer state park and saw many bison, praire dogs, and where I started feeling a little sick. Then the white burb died. We were going downhill without brakes for a moment until the driver shifted back into drive from neutral and finally got it stopped. I was rather out of it and climbed up the hill to meditate. We finally got out of there 3.5 hours later after we towed the burb to a ranger's station where it got towed. I meditated to help clear my head, but still had to endure a rather unfortunate dinner at pizza hut because all the other eateries were closed by then.

I should note here, that while I have slept and it is 4 days later, I am quite drunk and waiting for a man known as golden bear or magnum to pick me up, I am not a male prostitute.

So with the burb broke down and pizza hut in my gut I went to sleep. Ross had some memorable quotes the following morning, I should note that he had at least 3 beers by 1130 and I had one, anyway the quotes, "desperate times call for desperate drinking," "We have to be like Indians, can't count on our cell phones, burbs, marshmellows, cooking oil, and I can't believe its not butter whipped," later he would claim that Burt Reynolds would be the 5th man on mt. rushmore and related the history of the mountain. Essentially it was that 100 million years ago the indians carved our forefathers into this rock. How did they know ?!?!?!?! Ross is awesome. He's been whoopin' and callin' since he came out of the womb. anyway while everyone else was at mt. rushmore and sylvan lake for a second time charlie and I hung out with his cousins. We went to the hole in the wall, which is an abandoned(?) mining operation (lithium?) that was pretty cool. Went through a short tunnel and then came to a whole in the ground that was 100 ft of rock to the surface on all sides. The water looked about as inviting as any I've ever seen but I wasn't going near it, nor would I eat the wild raspberries growing all around in fear of contamination. After that we went to Hippie Hole where I jumped off a 15-18ft high rock into water. It was a delight. The scariest part was climbing the rope ladder back up to the rock, it was actually much scarier then the actual jumping which I did three times.

The next and last day we went to Dakota point where there were more cliffs to jump off. It took me a while to work up the courage but eventually I jumped off a 20-25 ft rock into the water, was long enough to have an O Shit moment on the way down. I did that twice. After that we waited around, got the white burb back, broken fuel line apparently. Got back to MN on tuesday at 415am and I stayed up the whole 40 something hours a second time which was a little nuts. Starting singing upbeat positive songs about dracula and having to live because we're all gonna die while working the next day. In any event, jayadev and brody should be here soon to pick me up, but until then its lots of water. Hopefully the tourney goes ok. Drinking tonight was fun. I am as always, you're drunken reporter in a random minnesota field -joe little

OH one more thought. At mars while drunk on the way to the airport(?) I was in shotgun and decided to pretend drive drunk to see if I could do it. Driving drunk I learned is a bad idea, but what I really messed up in was trying to change the radio station while pretending to drive. Bad idea. Let this be a lesson to any who drive after drinking or tired. Let the radio be and focus on the road. This has been a public service message from yours truly, I hope I didn't say anything stupid but if I did I'm sure I'll hear about it. ta ta

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Time to cowboy up and head up to the ol rodeo

So the week since mars has been interesting.I only got about 5-6 hours of sleep a night and the unsurprising result was that I felt tired all the time during the day. This culminated in my going to bed at 830 on friday. I slept 3 hours woke up, decided to look around and see if anyone was doing anything, drinking or otherwise, but instead didn't see anyone around anywhere and saw a car wrapped in saran wrap and another in toilet paper in the parking lot. Later I would learn these were the result of someone's first power hour. I went to bed an hour later and now I think I'm finally caught up on sleep.

Saw What's Up Tiger Lily on saturday morning, which is a woody allen film. He bought the rights to a particularly godawful japanese spy-thriller movie and dubbed in his own english dialogue. Its rather comical. Last night I also went to the 29th annual isanti rodeo which was a fun time. Although I must sadly report that the wireless microphone has killed the rodeo clown. They kept telling really lame jokes and drawn out skits that really added very little and sometimes distracted and detracted from the more exciting events that were occurring in close proximity to them. Saw bareback and saddle buck riding, steer wrestling and tying, team roping, barrel-riding (for the cowgirls) and the piece de resistance bull riding. The others were interesting, though I enjoyed the riding more than the roping and such, but the bull riding is really quite amazing. Only 3-4 riders managed to stay on the full 8 seconds, and even though I was a little bit removed from the action, the sight of a bull bucking is just about the scariest thing I've ever seen an animal do.. They have enormous amounts of mass and athleticism. Two riders got hurt while riding, On one of them the bull sort of half-rolled over him and it looked like he got stepped on as well, as they helped him off it looked like he had a broken arm or some ribs, was quite scary when it happened, especially as there was one moment right after when the rider was thrown where you could tell the situation was out of hand as the bull was bucking madly near the rider and everyone in the ring was going after the bull to get it away from him. everyone consisted of two cowboys on horseback trying to lasso the bull, and two real (unmiked) rodeo clowns trying to get in front of the bull and distract it from the rider, one of those clowns, incidentally the one in the long denim skirt, was pretty bad ass as I think at one point, in a different rider's attempt, he sort of jumped into the bull's side or sort of half on the bull, to get it away from a fallen rider, I don't remember exactly how it happened as it was pretty fast, but that was my general impression. The rider's incidentally had knee pads on beneath their chaps, all were wearing flak vests, and the ones who weren't criminally insane had on helmets, though criminally insane in this case is relative because I don't think an entirely rational person climbs onto a bull in the first place, much less after its been irritated.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

3 days later, I was wearing a salt lick

Mars: planet, god, candy bar company, and ultimate tourney/scene of debauchery and mischief.

I arrived pretty much on time in pittsburg after a 3 hour layover at Detroit Municipal Airport that I took advantage of to catch up on some correspondence. I was supposed to wait for bryan and cho to get in but as luck would have it, and BK and KC would have none of it, their flight was delayed until 200am. Fortunately farseeing bryan king had alerted mina and carl to this development and after waiting for a long delayed mr. eric abando our happy foursome proceeded to our hotel where I enjoyed a dinner of jerky, apple, and water before collapsing at 1230am EDST.

Saturday we went 1-2. Losing to some people from michigan and to Duck Xing rather badly. There were no amazing things of note except we won our first game 15-9 after being down at half 4-8. I, out of shape and practice, played mediocre at best with no true inspiring plays but some occasional sound dump, swing, and repeat. The cast of characters on our team was Akira, Eric Abando, Eric Guajardo(spelling?) whom gwen mistakenly called GuaHardOn all weekend up to monday morning (it was hilarious when she finally realized that was not the correct pronunciation of his name), bryan, kevin, josh, late arriving but still tall leo, whitney, carl, scully, Roo, trudy (arrived late sat. evening from a wedding and left early on monday to go hang out with sex-starved sailors in the middle of the pacific for sixteen days), gwen, mina, kate (whitney's girl), amy (akira's girl), racheal, Kim, and the newest member of Tea and Strumpets lil'lyla who at 22 years younger than myself ran away with the youth crown. Very sweet baby, for the most part never cried and was entertaining to play with and watch on the sideline. Kim incidentally is the most amazing beer shotgunner I've ever seen. She beat out a gentleman who goes by the name of Iron and I assume its because of his proclivity to consume lots of beer in short durations of time. This was one game after she shotgunned 2 beers with whitney to decide pull and jerseys (the other squad wrote down who they thought would win since they couldn't muster up the courage/feck to compete). Also saw nadine, yaya, and wiggles at the field. Was pretty cool to see them and would have loved to attend the dance party and night time festivities but no one was ever sober enough to drive me back, and unfortunately there wasn't in my opinion a critical mass of people camping.

The food situation was good. Had bob evan's once and denny's twice for breakfast. Denny's incidentally seems to be ashamed of their grand slam breakfast and hides it in very small type on the bottom right of their menus. I missed it the first day, but enjoyed it thoroughly on the second. Had church brewworks for dinner on saturday. Still my favorite brewery/restaurant combo beating out the great dane. Amazing food, try the buffalo loaf and the perogies as an appetizer, the beer is good although as I arrived quite drunk I didn't partake this year, and some amazing malted cinnamon ice cream. The next night ate at Don Pablo's. The food was a major disappointment with undercooked rice, a really bad beef enchilada although the chicken and cheese were satisfactory, but the place was slightly redeemed with a very good but not strong mango margarita, and the fact that they gave us lots of raw material to construct an intricate system of pipes and suck points to connect the drinks of 5 different people, although it proved unsuccessful as the suction mechanisms (my lungs) were a little underpowered. Kevin and Abando then tried to have straw intercourse with eric trying to stick his 3 connected straws into the end of kevin's 4 connected straws. After some good-natured-heckling eric started beating me with his straw penis, but stopped after my protestations.

Copious amounts of beer schtick was played on saturday and sunday. I was not the dominating offensive juggernaut of yesteryear but had a lot of fun and even saw some new beer schtick strategies develop, the fantasy players of note were kim and bryan on offense, and eric guaHardOn on defense. Speaking of silly games the showcase game between O-Pig and Duck-Xing of which thor, liz, and a man named hummer are a part of was most entertaining. Whitney was the unofficial duck-Xing cheerleader, throwing the crowd beer, wrestling a foam finger, and trying to sneak on a point with the aforementioned didget and an official duck-xing jersey (he was sadly unsuccessful). Bryan was hilarious when he tried to deliver a beer to thor but wound up slipping and falling down the hill on his ass. The half-time show was great, and this humble scribe was even a part of it, with a full scale dodge ball contest breaking out between duck xing and T&S with friends. The people who were more drunk, us, lost badly, but I feel we also won in a different more subtle way. Kate also ordered a pizza to the fields which is one of the greatest clutch tourney moves of all time in my opinion.

After dodgeball we went back to the hotel where we entered the hot tub and swimming pool, I broke rule 3 since I was a wee bit intoxicated, but had a lot of fun throwing balls at whitney, kevin, and others with the notable exception of the young mother and toddler-daughter whom I almost hit while trying to deflect a ball off the one cho was holding into whitney's face. The lifeguard was pretty passive and I imagine amused by all of this. Later after Don Pablo's Trudy, Abando, and I went to bryan's room and immediately began playing the hotel lava floor game that every 4 year old in the western world has played. Eric showed some impressive climbing ability and I took a short nap atop the tv cabinet. Later fell asleep on bed/island after certain happenings and goings on that at this point I won't go into.

Sunday we went 2-1. I played slightly better, but not great, we used force middle to great and sometimes amusing effect, played a bit of waa I finished second which keeps in line with my being one of the great circle games players of all time, if there is ever a hall-of-fame for splat I think my face will grace the door, incidentally I think the modesty hall of fame would also probably induct me.

Saturday night after brewworks the elevators were supossedly not working, after climbing eleven flights of stairs while drunk we discovered that none of the lights in our room would turn on. Despite the fact that the TV and clock were working. I wondered for a time who was the idiot who wired the tv and clock to one fuse and all the lights to a separate one. Only later did we figure out that guaHardOn who had been left unattended for a time earlier in our room had unscrewed all the lights in the room, even the 10 or so above the mirror in the bathroom, a very good prank I have to admit.

So I consumed a lot of beer and even the occasional bitch pop over the weekend. I even utilized the sippy beer strategy which is to break open a beer during half of the first game, usually 1130 or so, and just sip at it over the next few games with 1 or 2 other people, abando was also a fan. This dramatically increased heckling capability and general relaxation levels, I reccomend it. This may have contributed to what I alluded to in this post's title. I was wearing a black scandal jersey which after a day was coated in white blotches that was salt I had sweated out. This wasn't a health issue as I drank a fine combination of water, gatorade, and sippy beer (iron city is good stuff in bottle form) but on the back it created a really cool almost symmetric pattern about my shoulder blades. If you imagine the underarmour logo in the top middle as the moon, Kevin pointed out that the stains looked a lot like the outline of clouds on full moon night. It was beautiful. The sippy beer also helps one come up with cheers, after bryan pointed out that if you could dodge a wrench you could dodge a ball, I mentioned that if you could catch the clap you probably could catch a disc. After we all mentioned this loudly in cheering form one woman on the other team remarked that she was probably safe from the clap.

One other brief note, I got to match up against the teacher himself, Jim Parinella. He scored on me. I knew he was fast, but he's actually really quite fast for a man his age and size, not to mention his rather extensive and profitable knowledge of the game. This was in our last game on Monday in the B finals. We finished 10th out of 28-32 teams? and 5-4 which was a better place than last year, but a worse overall recored (last year we were 6-2).

All in all fun time and tourney, and if I may be so bold it even had a rather well defined shape.