The Royal Treatment

As this month has been the dog days of blogging, where everyone has something better to do than linger on the Internet, I’ll keep this one short.  (OK, it’s a goal…)

It wouldn’t have been my original intention to go to another Orioles game on such a hot day, but sometimes fate intercedes.  My company bought about 90 seats for Saturday’s game against the Kansas City Royals and threw them out to the first people that emailed in to say they wanted them.  Obviously, I was all over that.

The only question was where they were going to be.  But I had my suspicions…

Yep, there we are in row 18, section 328.  I can see Russia from here.

The funny thing was that my boss also got tickets for her family.  I thought we’d be sitting nearby, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  Her tickets were down in the lower bowl, by the Orioles dugout.  So I got to tease her all week about her high-falutin’ “Executive Seats.”  I’d say, “Yeah, like they’re going to put all Executive Floor and Corner Office people up in the nosebleeds with the rest of the riffraff…”

Side note: It’s really cool when you can tease your boss like that.  I am really lucky in that respect.

Anyway, a free ticket is a free ticket and this one saved me the per-ticket face value of $13.  OK, I should probably add that it also saved me all the ticket-purchasing fees from Ticketmaster, which brings the savings up to around $47.50.  I have to remember that there are poor starving children in Mississippi that don't get to see any pro baseball.

So with Pinky working on Saturday (and not really caring much for baseball) I turned to my go-to wingman, Sitcom Kelly.  She had a birthday recently so I figured I’d make the day into my birthday present. 

We got downtown about 2 hours before the game, so that left us plenty of time to drink beer on the cheap.  We ducked into our favorite ballpark-friendly watering spot, The Bullpen, and proceeded to knock down $2.50 Miller Lites and eat pizza.  It was there that she mentioned that one of her other friends gave her a $100 gift card at a liquor store, for her birthday.  I think this was her way of letting me know that I wasn’t going to get off light by getting her liquored up at the bar; I’d still be on the hook for the ballpark beers.

But while we were at The Bullpen, I spotted something weird down on the end of the bar.

 What the hell is THAT?

It looked like a big pink can of aerosol penis.  WTF?  I mean; I saw the big cone on the top, so I figured it was some kind of spray, but what was with the bulbous end just under the cone?  It wasn’t until I got home and blew up the picture that I got to the bottom of the mystery.  Seems it wasn’t spray-on schlong after all…

False alarm people… it’s just Fabreeze.

As for the game, the Orioles blew a 3-0, 4^th-inning lead and lost 4-3.  I felt bad for the pitchers because the Royals seemed to get guys on base in the weirdest ways.  The worst was a swinging dribbler that rolled right down the 3^rd base line and as the players waited for it to roll foul, it came to rest dead on the line.  Meanwhile, the batter ran to second for a 78-foot double.  Totally not fair.  Later, another guy hit a popup that landed right between three players, for another hit.

A more pressing concern, more so than the on-field foibles, was the heat.  Saturday was the first hot, muggy, typical Baltimore summer day.  At the beginning of the game, we were up high enough that we were in the shade of the upper deck roof overhang.  Round about the 4^th inning, we moved up about 10 rows and by then, there was significant cloud cover.  Would have been horrible sitting there with the sun beating down on us, but the clouding made it tolerable.  It was still quite humid, but we were certainly well hydrated.

Obviously, from this vantage point, I was not going to make it onto TV again… not unless I dove off the deck or something.  Luckily, I didn’t have to do anything nearly that dramatic to get the Beer Man’s attention.

That’s all I have about the game day experience, but just let me throw this one more Camden Yards note out there.

HBO has a new series running, called “VEEP”  (Sundays, 10:00 pm, with rebroadcasts all over the place.)  Julia Louis-Dreyfuss plays sitting Vice President Seline Meyer in this slice-of-political-life comedy.  It’s not like “’Elaine’ or ‘Old Christine’ plays VP;” it’s a lot more clever than that.  Think “The West Wing” played for laughs.

Another cool side note: the VP’s Chief of Staff is played by Anna Chlumsky, who is best known for starring as a little girl in the movie, “My Girl,” with MacCauley Culkin.

Boy, did she grow up real good…

Anyway, “VEEP” was filmed in and around Baltimore, which in most cases, stands in for DC.  But on tonight’s episode, the first 2/3 of the show takes place at Camden Yards, where the VP is supposed to make an appearance and meet some players.  There’s also supposed to be a scene in the Eyesore Hilton, which can be seen in the middle of the first picture in this post.  So yay, Baltimore! 

I give this series the ol’ bluzdude thumbs-up.  I’ve been greatly entertained by “VEEP” so far, but I add this one word of caution, or as I might put it, an F-word of caution.  Put the kiddies to bed before watching; the show is riddled with F-bombs, most of which are from the VP. 

But I did say it’s “slice of life,” didn’t I?