Sugar Shock and Awe

Like I intimated in my previous post, I used to have a running battle with my mom regarding breakfast food. 

Mom always insisted that we eat things that were, get this: “Good for us.”

Bleah!

We were forced to eat stacks of pancakes and waffles, oatmeal, eggs, omelets… We had to snack on fruit, not Froot Loops… It was child abuse!  If we got cereal at all, it had to be something “nutritious”, like Wheaties or Cheerios.  From what I could tell, the word “nutritious” was just a synonym for “tastes like ass.” 

As kids who only get to watch what we want on TV during Saturday morning cartoons, we were subjected to about a jillion hours worth of commercials for exotic sugary cereals.  And then to never be allowed any?  That’s a crime against childhood.

And it wasn’t just breakfast… no chips, little candy, no pop, no grapes and no head lettuce.  I know the latter two don’t really go with the sugary set, but we couldn’t have them because mom was supporting the migrant worker strike in the 60’s.

“Like I care about migrant workers, Mom, I’m six!  I want some grapes.”

You might think my childhood was just one long culinary nightmare, but we had an ace in the hole… Grandma!  (My maternal grandma, which made for such delicious irony.)

Grandma always had Pop Tarts and the good cereals.  In fact, she usually had that Kellog’s Snack Pack… you know, the deal with like 8 different little boxes of cereal, like Alpha Bits, Sugar Smacks, Sugar Pops, Froot Loops and my favorite, Sugar Frosted Flakes.  Whoever got up first got first pick, so there was often a race to get downstairs and claim our sweet prize.

Grandma also kept candy in the house.  The only down side to that was it was kept in one of those china candy jars with the lid.  Do you know how hard it was to get the lid on and off without making that “ting” sound?  My brother and I would be working that thing like Indiana Jones with that gold idol in the cave.  

But regardless of our attempts at subtlety, there would always be a “ting”, followed by “HEY, GET OUT OF THAT CANDY JAR!  YOU’LL SPOIL YOUR DINNER!”

In all my years, I’ve never once spoiled my dinner.  (Dinner was just too good.) 

But what I really wanted was Pop Tarts.  The Pop Tart Wars lasted until well into my teens.  I’d come down before school and Mom would say, “What would you like for breakfast, honey?  Pancakes?”

“Do we have any Pop Tarts?”

“You know damn well we don’t have any Pop Tarts.  You’re getting pancakes.”

I knew we didn’t have Pop Tarts, but I felt I needed to make the point.  Although I wasn’t so idealistic that I would inhale a stack of pancakes, either.  A dude’s gotta eat…

So cut to about 10 years later.  I’m living on my own in Cleveland, a long way from home for the first time.  Some time during my first year out there, Mom came to visit for a couple days.  I was managing a record store, so it wasn’t like I could just stay home and entertain for the whole time.  So Mom would be rambling around my little apartment while I was gone.

Before she arrived, I had a grand idea… I knew she probably worried about what her baby was eating now that he was fending for himself.  It was a perfect opportunity for some payback.  So I decided I would go out and buy a shitload of Pop Tarts and leave them hidden all over the apartment.  I’d put them on the CD rack, between books on the bookshelves, between the sofa cushions, in the bathroom cabinet… Everywhere she went, she’d find evidence of my sugary rebellion.  It would be hilarious.

Yeah, it was a great idea, right up until I paid attention to how much a box of Pop Tarts cost, and how many boxes I’d need.  Yeesh… Hey, I worked retail; I wasn’t making jack.

Gah!  Maybe Mom knew what she was doing after all.  She loved the idea though.  And now, all these years later, I wish I had just done it. 

If nothing else, it would have made a much better story.

Your Life - The Criterion Collection

I was thinking about my previous post, this morning… more specifically, how I almost screwed it up!  I’ll start at the beginning…

I was at work and listening to my MP-3 player and it played that clip of the Monty Python-Life of Brian stoning scene (one of my favorites).  The stoning got me thinking about the stone-throwing coming from the GOP in the recent news.  I checked on YouTube to see if I could get the video clip as a stand-alone scene and found that I could.

From there I jotted down a few notes, mostly the names of the pictures I would use.

When I came home after work, I sat down and wrote the post, found the pictures and got everything all loaded up in time for the Pens game to start. 

Feelin’ good, feelin’ cocky, happy to get the job done.

Later when I went to log off the PC for the night and go to bed, I looked over the post one last time and then suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten to include the stone-throwing angle and Python clip!

I can’t believe I did that!  I did some quick adding and editing and ended up with the post you see below.

Which brings me back to this morning as I was pondering this debacle.  I thought, “I wonder if other bloggers do stuff like this?” 

Then I thought , “Wouldn’t it be cool if blogs were like DVDs and you could just produce a commentary track or something that talks about how you put a post together?”

I know, it’s scary what crawls through my brain sometimes.  But that thought led to this one: “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if your LIFE was like a DVD?”

OK, that’s just inspired!  It’s your real life, complete with bonus features and running commentary.  You’re trundling along, say, doing your grocery shopping and then:

Voice Over (VO) Me: I was looking for some Pop Tarts.  I hadn’t had them in ages… not since I practically OD’d on them once I moved out of the house.  Mom never let us have Pop Tarts.

VO Mom: Are you kidding me, Bluz?  I offered you pancakes, eggs, omelets, waffles and all you can bitch about is not getting Pop Tarts?  Oh yeah, you had it rough… Ingrate…

VO Me: It was all about saving you work!  I didn’t want you to have to slave over the stove first thing in the morning.  Plus I loved the cherry ones.

VO Mom: Your ass.  You were just being a gruntie.

VO Friend: Remember when you first moved out?  You had about 85 boxes of Pop Tarts in the cabinet.  I’ve never seen anyone dunk Pop Tarts in Diet Coke for breakfast before.

VO Me: Dude, that was just once, ‘cuz I was out of Cherry Coke.

How much more interesting would life be like this?

Then there are the other special features:

Deleted Scenes!

Everything you ever decided against doing, you could see how it would have worked out if it hadn’t hit the cutting room floor.

Costuming!

Explaining some of those odd fashion choices you’ve made over the years.  Watch as the hot chick in the Merry-Go-Round talks you into buying a neon-checkered shirt that practically glows in the dark that you only wear once before finally giving away.  Watch as you pinball from Tony Manero slick to Urban Cowboy redneck.

Hey Watch This!

See every stupid drunken stunt you ever pulled, from the January outdoor pool parties in nothing but shorts and Tee’s, to falling down the front steps at your buddy’s wedding receptions and landing on the sidewalk as the keg you were helping carry rolls into Main Street.

Obligatory Gag Reel!
Watch yourself getting turned down by every girl you ever asked out, in rapid succession.  You can actually see your heart breaking, in Slo-Mo HD.

Easter Eggs!

Your rifling through your pockets and find a $20 bill… Easter Egg!  You open the fridge and spot one last beer back in the corner… Easter Egg!  You dig through the back of an old clothes drawer and find… Gah!  The old neon-checkered shirt… How the hell did THAT happen?  That’s a rotten egg.

Yeah, the possibilities are endless. 

It’s too late for me though.  Too much time has passed.  But I say to the nation’s youth… You’re already documenting every waking moment of your lives!  This would be a breeze for you.  Your life-DVD could become the new Christmas Newsletter. 

Complete with Easter Eggs.

The Sheriff is Near?

Another day, another dose of fake outrage from the GOP.  This time it’s about some pre-election comments made by Sen. Harry Reid regarding the America’s saying President Obama could succeed as a black candidate partly because of his "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

I probably shouldn’t even wade into this mess, but I never met a fire I couldn’t make worse by throwing gas on it. 

Clunky terminology aside, I don’t think he’s wrong.  As far as presidential politics are concerned, Senator Obama was a good “starter minority.”  As a nation, we dipped out toe in the water.  I think there were a great deal of Americans that were not ready for a full-fledged, card-carrying black man as president.  It’s like this:

America may accept this as President:

 Exhibit A: Colin Powell

But America is not yet ready for this:

Exhibit B: Flava Flav

He would get white Middle-America votes:

Exhibit C: Tony Dungy

He would not:

Exhibit D: Ray Lewis

The Townspeople just aren't ready for him:

Exhibit E: Sheriff Bart

The thing is, just talking about differences between races or cultures does not constitute being offensive or insensitive.  There are differences…  We as Americans (or humans of any country) do not have one universal way of acting or thinking.  We just don’t.  So I don’t see where acknowledging these differences is a big deal.

Where you get into trouble is attaching value judgments to the differences.  My feeling is that “Different” ≠ “Wrong”.  Some people do things in ways that we, ourselves, don’t and that doesn’t necessarily make them better or worse, just different.

There’s only one reason the Republicans are carrying this fight and that’s to try to throw some political stink onto Reid’s re-election campaign.  The party of the Willie Horton ad doesn’t give a rat’s ass about offending African-Americans.  They’ve never met a Head Start or After-School or Urban Assistance program that they didn’t want to cut.  To hear them huff and puff about this clumsy quote is to pretend they have a conscience about race relations.  They don’t. 

This is what happens when a political party is out of new ideas.  They’ve got “Lower Taxes”, “Law and Order” (for non-white-collar criminals), “Punish Women for Daring to Have Sex”, “Keep Out the Foreigners”, Lower Taxes Some More” and “Get the Gays Back in the Closet.”  Oh, and “Let Businesses Regulate Themselves Because What Are the Odds of Them Collapsing the Economy Again.”  All they can do is throw stones:  

So they grasp at stuff like this because as long as they’re filling the airwaves and pointing fingers, there’s no time left to point out their woeful legacy on social issues.

Besides ensuring that ultra-rich blue-bloods can pass on their filthy lucre on to their spoiled trust fund kids, tax free…

Playoff Bluz

I had it all worked out.  My company asked everyone to wear purple on Friday.  Naturally, I wore Steelers stuff. 

They were all “It’s Purple Friday.”

I was all, “But it’s gonna be a Blue Monday.”

I guess the joke’s on me.  The Ratbirds mopped up the floor with the Patriots this afternoon, waxing them 33-14 up in their house. 

It figures, the one time I root for the Belichick Patriots, they go and screw the pooch.  Not that I don’t get a secret thrill out of that… With all due respect to my New Englander friends at The Guys Perspective, I can’ stand the Patriots… not as badly as I hate the Ratbirds, but close.

Most of that has to do with their beating my boys in those AFC Championship games, especially the one I attended in January 2005… the one I froze my butt off when it was 11 degrees at kickoff.  And then we find out they were cheating to do it?  The Ravens may play undisciplined football and take a few too many cheap-shots, but I’m unaware of their ever having brazenly flouted NFL rules.

So I’m not too terribly torn up about the Pats taking a beat down.  I know the Rats are going down when they face the Colts in Indy next week.  And if they don’t, it’s going to be a rough couple of weeks for me, because I think the Ratbirds can handle either San Diego or the Jets.  So if the Colts don’t win, I see Baltimore in the Super Bowl.

At least the Bengals went down in flames.  I was pretty sure they were over rated and playing over their head, but I did think they would squeak by the Jets and then lose in the next round.  But apparently their Peter Principle level for the playoffs is the opening round.

Worst case scenario for me, the Ratbirds face the Cowboys.  Talk about football’s Sophie’s Choice… Can’t root for the Rats and if the Cowboys win, they tie the Steelers for most Super Bowls.  That just can’t be allowed to happen.  I just may be the first person to watch the Super Bowl via DVR, zap all the football and watch all the commercials.

I’d just have to do like my dad taught me back in the 70’s when we’d watch the Browns/Bengals game and either outcome would not affect the Steelers:  root for a 0-0 tie with lots of career-ending injuries. 

Just call me the Poster Boy for Schadenfreude.

In the NFC, for what it’s worth, I’m rooting for Green Bay and New Orleans.  The Packers have always been my favorite NFC team.  As for the Saints, it’s just that they haven’t won jack since, well, ever.  It’s always good to see new blood in the Super Bowl.  I would root for the Cardinals too, because of all the ex-Steelers connections, but as they’re playing the Pack right off the bat, that’s off the table.  But if they win, they I’d put them right after the Saints. 

Meanwhile, I’ll have to hide out in the Darwinfish Mojo Laboratories and cook up a nasty karmic cocktail to prevent any more Ratbird advancement… anything to avoid a Purple Reign.

Keep Me In Your Heart

A lot of people have never heard of Warren Zevon.  Most that do know only his song “Werewolves of London.”  But more discerning music fans know Zevon has a long trail of albums that span from the early 70’s through 2003.  Some songs were harsh, some were melodic, some were funny and many were very dark.  He was kind of an acquired taste.

He had a brief renaissance in the mid 80’s, but most of his catalog barely registered on the sales charts.  You really had to seek out his music if you wanted to hear it.

In 2002, Zevon was diagnosed with an inoperable lung cancer and given 6 months to live.  He immediately went into the recording studio and began writing songs and working on what would be his final and best album, “The Wind.”  

  

I didn’t know about any of this at the time.  I’d heard on the news that he’d died, but that was it.

 

Sometime in 2004, I was sitting around flipping channels and I came across a VH-1 special about Zevon’s last album.  It seems that once the word got out that Zevon’s final project, his music business buddies showed up en masse to contribute to the album.   Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmidt, Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakum, Tommy Shaw, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, Jackson Brown, David Lindley and Jim Keltner all came to sing, play and say their goodbyes.

The show was just fascinating, as it chronicled not only the creation of the album but the last months of Warren Zevon.  He was given 6 months to live, but he lived 6 months past that, working on his project the whole time.  He lived just long enough to see the birth of his twin grandsons.

The music itself was incredible, exploring the spectrum of emotion as one expires.  The whole special was just wrenching to watch (when it wasn’t hilarious).  When it was over, I logged into Amazon.com immediately to buy the CD.  And the day that VH-1 special became a DVD, I got that too.

So why am I talking about Warren Zevon and “The Wind” today?  The answer is my previous post.  It was my buddy Brill that turned me onto Zevon back when we were in high school.  In my mind, Brill and Zevon are intertwined.  I wasn’t there for Brill’s last days, but I could watch Zevon’s.

There was one song that was especially affecting.  “Keep Me in Your Heart” was the first song he wrote for “The Wind” but the last one recorded.  He sang it in his living room, on the couch, because he was too weak to make it out to the studio.  I always imagine it as being from Brill, to the wife he left behind.  It took months before I could listen to the song without choking up.

During the time of his illness, Zevon went on the Letterman show for one last performance and in the course of their conversation with his old friend, he said that one of the things he’d learned by having a fixed amount of time left, is you had to “enjoy every sandwich”. 

After Zevon’s death, a number of his friends came together and recorded a tribute album of his songs, and that was the title:  “Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon.”

Through this post and the last, I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.  We never know what’s around the corner.  Let your loved ones know what they mean to you, and find the joy in your life as your travel through it.  In other words, enjoy every sandwich.

Now, as of the next post, I’ll be done with this depressing stuff and will resume my customary jockularity.

Missing a Friend

In November, I wrote about the place I grew up outside Toledo, Ohio and the Barn in which my friends and I hung out.  I also wrote about finding my best friends and a bit about our relationships.

One of my buddies, Mark Brillhart, lived two houses down.  We almost never called him “Mark”; he was always just “Brill.” 

This was from our first Barn Party, in 1979.

The first thing you noticed about Brill was that he was impossibly skinny.

Brill is the 2^nd from the left.  We always figured they used him for bait to catch those fish.

We had a friend that used to draw caricatures of us and for Brill, he’d always just do a stick figure.

Brill, playing around in one my early apartments.

One of the reasons he was so skinny was that he was born with a congenital heart problem.  In fact, when he was born, the doctors told his mother he’d never make it to age 5.  The fact that he was 16 when I met him tells you that he was tougher than anyone expected.

He didn’t do anything strenuous with us, like play football, but he was always right there.  Sometimes he’d join in and go about half-speed.  We never really acted like anything was unusual about that.  It was just the way it was with Brill.  We all looked after him.

 One of the rare times all 5 of us buddies were able to get together after high school.

He had a thing for aircraft… was a total geek for fighter jets.  He had jet models suspended from his bedroom ceiling and could totally tell you what a plane was when one flew over.  (We lived near an Air National Guard base and the Toledo airport.)

Brill was rarely loud or boisterous, but when he was, it was hilarious.  More often, he exhibited a kind of sly wit that would crack you up when you least expect it.  Given his proximity, I probably spent more time with him than my other buddies, especially once we all got out of high school and began walking our own paths.  So many nights we’d get a sixer and just chill in The Barn.  We’d throw some records on and shoot the shit, talking about our hopes for the future, our laments of the past, solving the world’s problems.

Brill’s knock-off character, Father Weirdo Sarducci.

We wrote a chatty little letter to Stevie Nicks one night out there, like we all were old friends… that still makes me laugh.  We never mailed it or anything; in fact I think I still have it in the “archives” here somewhere.  It was just one of those things that didn’t make any sense, but just felt like the right thing to do.

In 1990, I was living in Cleveland and was about to move to Albany NY and a new job.  But the week before that, I had a vacation scheduled to go to Baltimore and visit my folks for a week.  Brill had taken the bus out to meet me in Cleveland, then we drove out to Baltimore for a week.  While out there, we cooked up a plan where he could come back to Cleveland with me, help me pack, then come to Albany with me to help me move and get settled in.  Then I’d get him on a bus back to Toledo.

His help was so invaluable to me.  We drove out in a 22’ Ryder Truck, towing my car behind.  Brill was singularly responsible for saving numerous lives along the way.  If it wasn’t for his desperate screams, I would have ran over numerous families in station wagons, while I was changing lanes.  They owe their very survival to his vigilance. 

I had a lot of help getting the truck packed up to go, but it turned out that I had zero help unloading.  So there was the 2 of us, me and spindly little Brill, unloading the entire truck.  I’m amazed that we pulled it off. 

He spent about a week with me in Albany, helping me get my feet on the ground, in yet another strange town.  Not just anyone would have done that for a friend, but Brill never thought twice. 

Brill got married in 1996 to Joanie.  What a great wedding that was.  We were all so thrilled that he’d finally found someone to love and to love him.  He was so happy!

Our buddy John, delivering a killer toast.

It was hard to keep up with people back then.  We weren’t good at writing letters, nor did we have much extra scratch to pay for a lot of long distance calls.  Things got easier when I got my first computer.

By this time it was 1999 and I was living here in Baltimore.  Being able to email now was helpful, but we still didn’t write much. 

By the end of the 90’s, Brill’s health became an issue.  He never talked about it, at least not with me.  But I did see that he quit drinking, completely.  I later learned that he really needed a complete heart and lung transplant.  The rub was that in order for the odds of success to be highest, he’d need one right away, while he was the most fit.  Unfortunately, the donor organs usually go to those that are in the most dire circumstances.  So in order to get the transplant, he’d have to wait until he was sicker… when the odds of success would be lower. 

Meanwhile, life sallied forth…

In 2001, I discovered a web service called E-Circles, with which you could sign people up and schedule events, share pictures, and leave comments.  I immediately set up an E-Circle for The Barn and those that called the place a 2^nd home.  Brill and I traded a lot of comments on that site.  I could only get back to Toledo once a year, so this made it so much easier to keep in touch.  We made plans to throw a big Barn Reunion for the Fall of 2001.  By then, Brill and Joanie had a young son, Jack.

You’re probably wondering why I’m devoting all this time and space to my old friend.  Here’s why.

One morning, the telephone woke me up at about 5:30 AM.  That’s never a good thing.  Good news waits until you’ve been up a while.  It was my dad.  He told me that Mark went in to the hospital the night before with chest pains, and died early that morning.  My friend, my buddy, just died of heart failure at 39, leaving a wife and son behind.  That was January 8^th, 2001, nine years ago tomorrow.

It was a whirlwind after that… my sister and I jumped into the car and drove out for the funeral service a couple days later.  My brother also came later and my folks came down from Green Bay, where they were living then.  I knew I was going to have to say something and had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to say, but wondered how I was ever going to get a word out.

Thankfully, our buddy John had it covered.  All he asked was that Rik and I come up and stand behind him, which we were happy to do. 

I look at pictures of us from that weekend and we just look so beat up.  As much as we enjoy being all together, it was just brutal.

I think about Brill all the time… most often when I see a jet fighter fly-by over a stadium.  I know Brill would have known exactly what they were.  I’m glad we had that last cluster of emails and message board comments.  I was sure he knew how much he meant to me, and to all of us.

We had our Barn Reunion that September over Labor Day weekend.  I noticed our laughter was a little louder and our hugs were a little longer.  We had a huge turnout of so many people that had spent time in The Barn… and some of their parents too!  It was an amazing event.  Joanie and Jack came too.  The boy looked so much like his dad.

If you take anything out of this post, I hope it is to make sure your friends know how much you care about them.  If you have old beefs, settle them.  Make sure those you love, know it.  Life as you know it can change in an instant.

Because I know I miss my friend.  And I’d give anything to spend one more night playing records with him and talking quietly long into the night. 

  

Mark Brillhart 6/26/1961 – 1/8/2001

January Eclipse  (for Mark)

A red moon rides

low over this morning

highway.  Vapor trails arc.

You loved airplanes

wildflowers, Montana

October chill, your only son.

Now January’s sky broods

over the full moon’s muted glow.

We go to say goodbye

this early light, our guide

to keeping you real

in glistening eyes

smiles, salutes, and wings.

Mary Ann 1/8/04

The Miami Trip - The Sequel Part 2

For today’s game-day mojo, I selected my black Polamalu jersey over a long yellow-sleeved t-shirt, with Steelers socks. 

Usually I wear the white Polamalu jersey to away games in order to match the team, but for some reason, I had a feeling I should go with the black.  Then when we got to the game, we learned that the Dolphins were wearing their white jerseys, so that put the Steelers in black.  Boo-yah!

We landed in the outer parking lot at Land Shark Stadium about 11:30, surrounded by many, many of our fellow Steeler fans.  They were everywhere.  I was beginning to wonder if there were going to be any Dolphins fans, beside my brother-in-law Scottie.  But yes, there were Dolphins fans there… they were all parked up close.  All in all, I’d say the Steelers fans made up just under half the crowd. 

I know what you’re thinking… “You’ve got a non-Steeler fan in the family?”

Yes, it’s true.  My sister is engaged in a mixed marriage.  She married a Dolphins fan.

But it’s OK.  We like him anyway and figured we might need a buffer from the resident ‘Phins fans.  Turned out that wasn’t the case.  Just about everyone we encountered was either very nice or just didn’t care.  Can’t ask for more than that when venturing into an “away” stadium.

And quite a colorful stadium it is!  These are the ramps on the way up to the upper deck:

We saw this guy while on the way up:

You'd have thought we were in Philly!

When we were deciding on tickets, we opted to go with Club Level seats.  Man, what a good deal, if for nothing but access to the Club Level food service area.

Great food, relaxing setting, lots of TVs.  It also helped that the corridors were relatively clear and made for easy entrance and exit.

Our seats were in the first and second rows of the club level.  Here’s the view:

Our view from the corner.

We were thrilled how it turned out.  If you want my advice, when you’re going on a road trip and are paying for airfare and hotels, there’s no sense skimping on the ticket. 

I gotta hand it to the Dolphins, they put on an entertaining game experience.  This was from the pre-game introductions.

They also had something I’ve never seen before… a bubble machine that would send these sculpted Dolphin logos and stuff into the air.  This pic shows a bubbled “80”, in honor of Don Shula’s 80^th birthday.

OK, you have to tilt your head to the right, otherwise it looks like a surprised monkey.

The Dolphins’ owners also get into the act.  Besides the usual old rich white guys, the Dolphins also count Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Jimmy Buffett and Venus & Serena Williams as owners.  Each of them made multiple appearances on the scoreboard, exhorting the fans to go “Fins Up”, which is their rallying cry.  Singer Fergie was also on hand… I don’t know if she’s ownership or just there for the Shula party, but she seemed to be everywhere, introducing the players onto the field, getting interviewed on the TVs, doing the Fins Up thing, and just looking sexy.

The game?  Eh, given how the day turned out, I’m not going to get into much analysis.  I was very proud, though, at the overall volume produced by the Steeler fans, as well as the amount of towel twirling.

The picture here doesn’t quite do it justice.  You can see the effect a little better on this video I shot of Ben’s TD pass to Heath Miller.  I was recording all the “goal-to-go” downs when the Steelers were in our end.  There are 5 uneventful plays, and this:

I just have to learn to slow down the pan when I scan the crowd.

The game was enjoyable.  Obviously, the Steelers wouldn’t let us just enjoy an inevitable win; they had to go and give up a couple quick scores to a 3^rd string QB, but we were happy with the “W”.  And it was nice to see January football without freezing our asses off.  Worst you can say was that in the shade, it was a bit brisk.  When the sun was out, it was quite warm.  Thank you, Miami!

Unfortunately, before we even got out of the stadium, we learned that the Patriots choked and let the Texans win, so that took a little bit of the air out of our sails.  But all in all, we were quite content with the experience… until we got back out to the parking lot and got trapped for about 40 minutes.  There was only 1 exit and not everyone was lining up in an orderly fashion.  Line jumping seemed to be the status quo.  If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I was back in Maryland. 

Once we got out onto the road, we were back at the Hilton in no time.  We were hoping to catch the Penguins/Panthers hockey game but either it wasn’t on or the hotel didn’t carry the channel that aired it.  So we had to be content with watching the Bengals fold under the Jets.  On the bright side, the pizzas we ordered were much better than the ones we got the last time we were in South Florida. 

So, no playoffs this year for the Pittsburgh Steelers.  That sucks, but they can’t blame anyone but themselves.  One win over any of those patsies we lost to (Bears, Chiefs, Raiders, Browns) or either game against the over-rated Bengals and they would have been in.  And once you’re in, you have that puncher’s chance that got the Cards in last year, or the Steelers a win in Super Bowl XL.

Or maybe I just take the blame myself, for misreading the mojo tea leaves for some of those games.  I never should have worn the Lambert throwback during the Browns game.  Coach Tomlin was just too polite to mention it at his final press conference.

One final note, just because it cracked me up…

I saw today on my StatCounter page that someone from Maryland found this site when they Googled “Why do people hate the Ravens?”  Boy, did he ever come to the right place! 

So glad to be able to provide such invaluable public service!

The Miami Trip - The Sequel

The good news is that there were no hurricanes this time around.  The bad news… well, there really isn’t any.  We got down and back easily, the hotel was lovely, the game was enjoyable and the company was grand.  We ate, we drank, and we ate and drank some more.  We saw the Steelers win a dramatic game, but get bounced from the playoffs anyway.  So here are some of the things that happened:

*  No airport snafus… we got down to Lauderdale without issue.  There was practically no line at airport security.  I might have thought more people would have been traveling on Saturday morning, but I’d waited in longer lines at Burger King.

*  We stayed at the Hilton in Ft. Lauderdale, by the marina.  The hotel was beautiful, for the most part, but very crowded.  Apparently some cruise ships had just disembarked there so the lobby was overrun with a ton of foreign people (mostly European) with piles of baggage.  Also, there were a lot of University of Iowa students there for the Orange Bowl against George Tech.  Obviously, there were a great deal of Steeler fans as well and not only that, the actual Steelers were staying there too.  Just like old times, when we used to go to the games in Cleveland.  This was a surprise… we had no idea the players were staying there when we booked the rooms.

*  My sister Ann and her husband Scottie had a room in the main tower, so their room served as family HQ.  They were on the 9^th floor with a balcony overlooking the pool.

My folks were in an “East Villa” room, which you can see directly behind the pool.  My brother and I were on the opposite far end of the West Villa.  This was our West Villa view:

OK, it wasn’t exactly The Tower. 

*  We couldn’t check in until 4, so we stashed our stuff in the Tower room and went down to the pool to sit in the sun, have some drinks and yack.  The “sitting in the sun” part was crucial.  It was really pretty chilly, for South Florida, and very breezy.  If you weren’t in the sun, you were shivering.

One thing I wasn’t crazy about was that the hotel flooded the pool area with music… if you can call it that.  It was this endless loop of this heartless, soulless electronica beat.  It was like you were trapped in an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  Gah!  My kingdom for some real music!  Music should relax or inspire!  The only thing this stuff did was attract fat guys in Speedos.

*  After we checked in and got settled, we mustered out again for dinner.  And who’s patrolling the valet area but Jeff Reed.  He seemed to be collecting sluts for the night’s endeavors, before hopping onto the courtesy van.  We also saw Hines bolt straight from a side door to the van.  His hammies looked OK to me… he wasn’t wasting any time dallying around.  Throughout the night we’d come across other enormous dudes coming and going.  Dad wondered why they were wearing their shoulder pads under their shirts.  Of course, they weren’t.  They never grew guys that size in Coraopolis.

*  I think South Florida is kind of like the Los Angeles of the South.  Everything is very glossy, but shallow.  There are lots of shiny surfaces and bold lines but no heart.  For example, this is what they consider an outdoor fire, around which people are supposed to gather and hang out.

This looks like the coldest fire you’ll ever see.  Hell, you can’t even see what’s burning!  It appears to be nothing but a gas fireplace starter, blowing flame jets through glass gravel crystals like you’d find in an aquarium.  It’s not exactly inviting… unlike this:

Now that’s a fire!

*  We caught zero guff from anyone about being there for the game.  In fact, we were treated like more of an oddity.  (Especially from the visiting Europeans)  I was expecting a little more attitude from local people, but as it turns out, no one is local.  Everyone there seemed to be from somewhere else.  (Yes, I know it’s a hotel, but I mean everywhere… restaurants, gas stations, carry-outs, etc.)

*  We had a fine dinner at an Italian place that was in walking distance.  I only mention this because we had an interesting discussion about olive oil. 

The discussion had to do with exactly what the hell “Extra Virgin” olive oil is.  I mean, how does something become “extra” virgin?  Virginity is like pregnancy, in that there are no degrees.  You either are or you aren’t.  The only explanation for Extra Virgin Olive Oil I can thing of is this one:

"Well blow me down!" 

*  I loved the beds at the Hilton… with the pillow-top mattress and all the pillows; it was like sleeping on a cloud.  The TV was also in HD too… I haven’t seen that before in a hotel.

*  Check out the boat that was docked outside the Hilton, The Mirage, from Pittsburgh PA. 

It’s kind of chunky looking… like the nautical equivalent of one of those battery-powered mini-cars.  What I really want to know is how does one get a boat from Pittsburgh to the east coast of Florida?  Without going through all those "Deliverance" rivers…  My guess… a big trailer.

I just decided that I should make this a 2-part story… not only am I running long before I even get to the game, I’m feeling less and less like working right now.  I have to go back to work tomorrow with no more lazy days off in sight.  So!

Coming up: Going to the Steelers/Dolphins game at Land Shark Stadium.

Happy New Year

The House of Bluz would like to wish you a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

2009 was tough around these parts, the sporting world not withstanding.  (Any time your teams with the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup in one year, you can't complain about pretty much anything.)  But for me, my 2009 highlight was finding you, who takes the time to look me up and see what's on my mind.

I've got some good stories lined up for telling this year and with luck, some interesting things to report from 2010.  

To start, I'll be traveling to Miami, tomorrow, to unite with my family and take in the Steelers/Dolphins game.  If all goes as planned, I'll return on Monday and hope to have the story posted by Monday or Tuesday night.  Fortunately, it is no longer hurricane season (see the 2 prior posts) but we have had airline/terrorism activity recently so I'm sure there will be some other kind of aviation CF we'll have to deal with.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this last holiday weekend we'll have for a while and go charging into 2010 with happy hearts.  Let's rock!

bluz